
mmm 






,. BIRTHDAYS 



THOMPSON 




Glass .XL, 

Book __^ 



Our Birthdays. 



€otoar& £un£et: 



SEVENTY-ONE TO ONE HUNDRED. 



' Tis the sunset of life gives vie mystical lore, 
And coming events cast their shadows be/ore. 

— Thomas Campbell. 



By A. C. THOMPSON. 



New York: 46 East Fourteenth St. 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL AND COMPANY. 

Boston : 100 Purchase St. 






Copyright, 1892, 
By A. C. THOMPSON. 



Transfer 
Engineers School Lifaju 
June 29, 1931 



€o <3®c\nbtx$ 



THE ELIOT CONGREGATION 

v;ho have reached or may yet reach seventy years of 
age and upwards, 

Eijese Ipiribbag ©reelings 

A REMEMBRANCER OF 

THE EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF BIRTH 

AND 

FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF ORDINATION 

ARE INSCRIBED BY THEIR FRIEND, 

ST be Senior pastor. 

Boston^ September^ iSq2. 



PREFACE. 



Toward the close of my first voyage, many years 
ago, I witnessed a sunset singularly impressive. It 
was soon after entering the German Ocean by the 
northern route, A heavy blow, not wholly unattended 
by peril, had subsided into a favoring breeze. Our 
bark seemed to enjoy the change ; reefs were shaken 
out, and the movement became easy and rapid. The 
dark, heavy clouds parted, then passed behind us, and 
a fleecy drapery alone remained in the West. Before 
going down, the sun shone forth with transcendent 
beauty, converting the expanse of water into a sea 
of molten and mingled gold and silver. 

The sunset and eventide of not a few acquaint- 
ances since then have reminded me of that scene, 
which, though more than half a century has inter- 
vened, is still vividly before me. My thoughts turn 
with special tenderness toward surviving acquaintances, 
and others of advanced age. The hope of contrib- 



vi PREFACE. 

uting healthful thoughts and facts for the comfort of 
such has inspired the present volume. 

The following chapters are severally the substance 
of as many letters sent to different friends on their 
anniversaries of birth. Matters of a purely private 
and personal nature have, for the most part, been 
stricken out, and the freedom of epistolary writing 
has, in a measure, been modified. 

A. C. T. 



SEVENTY-ONE. 



Today, O loved and honored one , 

What throngs rise up to call thee blest, 

And pray thy slowly sinking sun 
Long linger in the glowing west ! 

— Charles T. Brooks. 

Many join in heartiest good wishes, but 
no one more cordially, my friend, than I do. 
Every year I set a little illuminated device 
in the calendar against this date. But con- 
gratulations greet you from all sides, for it 
is your happiness to make others happy, 
and not a few of them. It must be a foun- 
tain of purest joy to be able to diffuse 
rational gratification through so wide a 
circle of friends. 

The health and strength that we witness 
are an occasion for thanksgiving. Confreres 
of the same age come to mind in goodly 
numbers Very few, however, can make 
such a record as John Wesley: iW This being 



2 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

my birthday, 5 ' he wrote, " the first day of 
my seventy-second year, I was considering, 
How is this, that I find just the same 
strength as I did thirty years ago? that 
my sight is considerably better now and my 
nerves firmer than they were then? that 
I have none of the infirmities of old age, 
and have lost several that I had in my 
youth ? The grand cause is the good pleas- 
ure of God, who doeth whatsoever pleas- 
eth him. The chief means are: i. My con- 
stantly rising at four, for about fifty years ; 
2. My generally preaching at five in the 
morning — one of the most healthy exercises 
in the world ; 3. My never traveling less, by 
sea or land, than four thousand five hundred 
miles in a year." Miss Caroline Herschel 
also makes a remarkable record: " A severe 
attack of typhus fever in 1761 reduced my 
strength to that degree that for several 
months after I was obliged to mount the 
stairs on my hands and feet like an infant ; 
but here I will remark that from that time 
to this present day (June 5, 182 1) I do not 



SEVENTY-ONE. 3 

remember ever to have spent a whole day 
in bed." Sixty years of uninterrupted health, 
amidst manifold exposures, some of them 
destructive epidemics, is indeed something 
wonderful. There is, however, one case at 
least more remarkable than that. I refer 
to Susan Pierson of Bridgehampton, Long 
Island. For more than half a century she 
did not set foot on the floor, or sit upright 
in bed. With a single exception her jour- 
neys all that time were merely from one 
corner of her room to another, once a 
week, and even then only in the arms of 
some strong person. The best medical skill 
brought no relief, and her entire patrimony 
was spent in vain. But she continued cheer- 
ful to the age now in mind ; she cherished 
a deep sense of God's goodness, and, during 
the more than half a century of her con- 
finement, the Bible was never out of her 
reach. Unquestioned piety made her a 
useful Christian — useful to neighbors and 
to successive pastors. If the dependent, the 
suffering, and those shut in for long periods, 



4 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

give thanks habitually, how fitting is grati- 
tude on the part of the well and the active ! 
I have never heard you complain of the 
flight of time. It is no more a legitimate 
subject for lamentation than the rapid revo- 
lution of the earth. on its axis or in its orbit. 
Every one has all the time there is, and it 
is enough for the sphere and the object of 
his being. If there were a wholesale or 
retail establishment where time could be 
kept on sale, no better use would be made 
of the purchase than what we make of that 
already in hand. It is a joy to friends that 
various activities on your part are not laid 
aside. History is filled with stimulating 
examples of fresh mental powers at your 
age. Dr. Isaac Watts, notwithstanding he 
carried a feeble body, wrote an essay on the 
" Freedom of the Will," which, however, was 
chiefly remarkable for calling forth a refuta- 
tion by President Edwards. This, too, was 
the period of life at which Bishop Burnet 
published the third volume of his History 
of (he Reformation, and Buffo n the Epoques 



SEVENTY-ONE. 5 

de la Nature (177S), which is regarded as 
the most finished of his works, and is said 
to have been rewritten eighteen times. 

The history of art is not without suq;- 
restive records — as the sketches of himself 
and his wife by the gifted William Blake, 
and a statue for St. Peter's by Michael 
Angelo, a work which he undertook at the 
express command of the Pope, and on the 
unusual condition that he should receive no 
compensation. 

With some this has been the epoch of 
entering on new kinds of work and into 
new positions. You recollect, for example, 
that Galba resolved to place himself at the 
head of the Roman world (A. D. 68) ; that 
General Falkenstein left the peaceful art 
of painting on glass to assume an important 
command in the war of 1S66; that Las 
Casas was made bishop ; that Lord John 
Campbell was appointed Chief Justice ; Lord 
Palmerston, Prime Minister ; and that Ben- 
jamin Franklin was placed by Congress at 
the head of a commission to the court of 



6 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

France, with powers to negotiate loans, 
purchase stores, and grant letters of marque, 
to which appointment he consented with all 
the alacrity of youth, Ernst Moritz Arndt, 
" The Singer of the German Fatherland," 
was reinstated in his professorship at Bonn 
(1840); and he wrote: "For twenty years 
I had been lying by like an old blade which 
had rusted in its scabbard. I was over 
seventy ; too old for fresh, living speech. 
At an age when a wise man would leave the 
professor's chair, I was to mount it again. 
I hesitated and hesitated, feeling that my 
trumpet had blown its last blast; that I 
had no longer any os magna sonans ; that 
I should be for the University nothing but 
a useless name. But I was so situated 
that, to his Majesty and to the people at a 
distance, a refusal would have had the ap- 
pearance of defiahce." The town of Bonn 
celebrated the event with a great banquet, 
in which one hundred and sixty persons of 
all classes took part. 

Birthday reminiscences almost always 



SEJEXTY-OXE. 7 

stand associated with one's birthplace, and 
with a regard peculiarly tender and strong. 
Dr. Junkin, a clergyman of the Middle 
States, said : " I traveled two hundred and 
thirty miles to preach on the seventy-first 
anniversary of my birth, and to sleep in 
the house in which I was born. Then and 
there I enjoyed a feast of melancholy but 
delightful reminiscences." You have repeat- 
edly referred with regret to the circum- 
stance that the house where vou first saw 
the light passed out of the family, and 
is now in an unattractive condition. I am 
sorry to say that from experience I can 
fully sympathize with you, and if it will 
afford any comfort let me remind you that 
the house in which Erasmus was born is a 
gin-palace. 

This day thou metes threescore eleven, 
And I can tell that bounteous Heaven — 
The second sight, ye ken, is given 

To ilka poet — 
On thee a tack o' seven times seven 

Will yet bestow it. 



8 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

So wrote Robert Burns to Mr. Maxwell, of 
Terraughty. His friend was probably not 
quite ready to anticipate living to celebrate 
a one hundred and twentieth birthday. 

Nobody wishes to grow old, though 
most people are willing to become aged. 
You have more than once said to me 
regarding the time of transition, that the 
older one grows the less of anxiety should 
there be, and you are, I think, of the same 
mind w 7 ith Dr. Rees. A man once said to 
him, " You are whitening fast." The doc- 
tor answered him in a sermon, which he 
preached immediately after : " There is a 
wee white flower which comes up through 
the snow and frost ; but we are glad to 
see the snowdrop, because it proclaims that 
the winter is over and that the summer is 
at hand. A friend reminded me last night 
that I was whitening fast. But heed not 
that, brother ; it is to me a proof that my 
winter will soon be over ; that I shall have 
done presently with the cold east winds 
and the frosts of earth, and that my sum- 



SEVENTY-OXE. 9 

mer, my eternal summer, is at hand." John 
Newton, not long: after his seventy-first 

birthday, wrote to a friend (please accept 
the copied letter as from your friend) : 
" You kindly inquire after my health. My- 
self and family are, through the divine 
favor, perfectly well ; yet, healthy as I am, 
I labor under a crowing disorder for which 
there is no cure — I mean old age. I am 
not sorry it is a mortal disease from which 
no one recovers ; for who would live al- 
ways in such a world as this who has 
a Scriptural hope of an inheritance in a 
world of lio'ht ? I am now in mv seventy- 
second year, and seem to have lived long 
enough for myself. I have known some- 
thing of the evils of life, and have had a 
large share of the good. I know what the 
world can do, and what it cannot do ; it 
can neither give nor take away that peace 
of God which passeth all understanding; 
it cannot soothe a wounded conscience nor 
enable us to meet death with comfort. 
That you, my dear sir, may have an abid- 



IO OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

ing and abounding experience that the 
gospel is a catholicon adapted to all our 
wants and all our feelings, and a suitable 
help when every other help fails, is the 
sincere and ardent prayer of your affec- 
tionate friend." 



SEVENTY-TWO. 



We talked with open heart, and tongue 

Affectionate and true. 

A pair of friends, though I was young, 

And Matthew seventy-two. 

— Wordsworth. 

Joy to you, my friend! The cordiality 
is very honest, for I feel not a little hon- 
ored and benefited by your kind regard. 
But I know you account it the best thing 
about this birthday to have the favor of 
Him who never had a birthday. " The 
Eternal God is thy refuse" — enough for 
any one, young or old. When, as in your 
case, he superadds bodily health, mental 
powers in full exercise, and pleasant sur- 
roundings, the seventy-second anniversary 
may well awaken warm thanksgiving. 

You made inquiry a few days since 



12 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

about instances of working ability at this 
age. Many others who have had an expe- 
rience similar to yours come pleasantly 
to mind. On his seventy-second birthday 
William Mason, friend and biographer of 
the poet Gray, wrote an exquisite sonnet. 
The health of William Wordsworth was 
excellent, and his faculties still vigorous 
(1842); Richard Cumberland, essayist and 
dramatic author, wrote his own memoirs 
in two volumes (1806); the first volume of 
Irving's Life of Washington was prepared ; 
and Dr. Thomas Scott, though oppressed 
by disease, continued his severe mental 
application, and remarked : " I never stud- 
ied each day more hours than I now do. 
Never was a manufactory more full of 
constant employment than our house — - 
five proof sheets of my Commentary a 
week to correct, and as many sheets of 
copy (quarto) to prepare." Galileo, though 
now nearly blind, was engaged in complet- 
ing the Dialogues on Motions. Thorwald- 
scn's mind had lost none of its power, but 



SEVEXTY-TWO. 1 3 

still possessed the same creative facility ; 
Sir Roderick Murchison received the Wol- 
laston medal (1864); and the Hon. Caleb 
Cushing, though he had spoken French for 
more than forty years, being in Paris, 
devoted three hours daily to the study of 
that language, under the guidance of an 
eminent teacher, with a view to acquire 
greater facility of expression. Just on 
the verge of seventy-two, Horace Walpole 
writes to Hannah More (1789): "My eyes 
are perfect ; my hearing but little im- 
paired, chiefly to whispers, for which I cer- 
tainly have little occasion ; my spirits never 
fail ; and though my hands and feet are 
crippled, I can use both, and do not wish 
to box, wrestle, or dance a hornpipe. In 
short, I am just infirm enough to enjoy 
all the prerogatives of old age, and to 
plead them against anything I have not a 
mind to do." Dr. Johnson wrote to Mrs. 
Thrale : " But what if I am seventy-two ? 
I remember Sulpicius says of Saint Martin 
— now that is above your reading — est 



14 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

animus victor annorum et senectuti cedere 
nescius. Match me this among your young 
folks ! " The young folks of Cambridge 
did an appropriate thing on the seventy- 
second birthday of Henry W. Longfellow. 
The children improved that occasion to 
present him with an arm-chair made from 
the wood of the horse-chestnut tree cele- 
brated by the poet in the " Village Black- 
smith." A small brass plate bears this 
inscription : " To the author of the ' Village 
Blacksmith ' this chair, made from the wood 
of the spreading chestnut-tree, is presented 
as an expression of grateful regard and 
veneration by the children of Cambridge, 
who, with their friends, join in best wishes 
and congratulations on this anniversary, 
February 27, 1879." 

What would you say to buckling on 
armor, or taking a high position in civil 
service? Both have been done at your age. 
In the war with Gustavus Adolphus, upon 
Wallenstein's dismissal the remorseless Tilly 



SE VEXTY-TWO. I 5 

was appointed generalissimo of the impe- 
rial armies, and though he had already com- 
manded in thirty-six battles, he had never 
suffered a defeat ; the Spanish General 
Castanos was again appointed Captain Gen- 
eral and called to the Council of State 
(1825); while Cardinal Fleury was made 
Prime Minister. 

Some diminution of strength, and the in- 
vasion of local infirmities, are, to be sure, 
almost invariable at this period ; and cir- 
cumstances more trying than bodily or 
mental decay may sadden advanced years. 
I rejoice that so few, if any such, mingle in 
your experience. Pleasant memories abound. 
On the seventy-second anniversary of her 
birth (181 2) Mrs. Mary Fletcher, nee Mary 
Bosanquet, entered in her journal: "I have 
this day reached my seventy-third year, 
and I feel a strong desire that this may 
be a birthday to my soul. I have such a 
sense of a full blessing purchased for me, 
with such a near approach to God, that I 



1 6 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

long to attain it. I wait at the feet of my 
dear Saviour for a fuller display of his 
love." From past conversations with you 
I have no doubt you will assent to an 
expression of the Rev. Thomas Adam, of 
Wintringham : " I, who am just writing in 
my seventy-second year, find by experience 
that I could as soon think and resolve the 
disease out of my body, as the disease of 
sin out of my heart; and if I could do 
everything for myself, I had rather that 
God should do it, as it would be a token 
and proof of his love and favorable pres- 
ence with me." 

It is sometimes said that beyond three- 
score and ten one lives on borrowed time; 
but who that is younger has independent 
ownership of time ? Can any portion of 
any life be other than a trust ? You have 
occasionally and wisely admonished me 
with the words, " Be ye also ready." Are 
you aware that it was at seventy-two that 
Timothy Swan, author of the well-known 



SE VENTY- TWO. 1 7 

tunes, " China " and " Poland/' sent lines 
to his son in New York, closing thus? 

Our lamps we'll fill brimfu' of oil, 

That's gude and pure, that wunna spoil — 

We'll keep them burning a' the while, 

To light our way ; 
Our work bein' done, we'll quit the soil 

Maist onie day. 



SEVENTY-THREE. 



"The morning mists that dimmed your eye 
Made large and luminous life's ideal ; 
Now, cut against your clearer sky, 
You comprehend the true, the real. 

" Time still has joys that do not pall, 

Love still has hours serene and tender; 

'Tis afternoon, dear — that is all! 

And this is afternoon's calm splendor." 

Not boisterous and brilliant, but quiet 
and bright ; a life without tempests or con- 
flagrations, one that we love to contemplate, 
peaceful and restful — such is yours, my 
dear friend. Many give thanks today that 
a life of that kind has not been cut short 
before threescore and thirteen, and that 
there is a prospect it may continue for years 
to come. This is all the more gratifying 
because of the contrast to a prevailing type 
of life in our age and our country — an age 
of bustle and rush, loud talk, electric glare, 



20 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

and sensationalism generally. Amidst the 
rage for activity and the hurry that makes 
almost everybody breathless, there is great 
comfort in sitting down with one who is not 
surprised at the words, " Study to be quiet," 
and who does not need to go to a dictionary 
to find the meaning of meditation. In these 
days when Sabbatic calm might seem to 
be classed with the lost arts, you are con- 
tented in quietness; simple pleasures have a 
charm for you, and silence of the soul, while 
engaged in sweet contemplations, seems a 
paradise regained. Was not Pauls three 
years' retirement in desert Arabia a season 
of needful study, of blessed repose and 
blessed visions ? The life of Gilbert White, 
the naturalist of Selborne, England, became 
a genuine idyl ; it was singularly peaceful, 
and so fruitful in his line of things as to 
invest that place with a charm for natural- 
ists to this day. He declined all prefer- 
ments ; did not deem it needful to make the 
grand tour of Europe, nor to go round the 
world in eighty days ; and at seventy-three 



SE VENTl - THREE. 2 I 

was content to end his days in the same 
house in which he was born. 

Will you not oblige your friends by 
writing an autobiography? Sir John Rennie 
wrote his when seventy-three. " My apol- 
ogy, " says he, "for the present work is this: 
I think it is the duty of every one who has 
led an active professional life, faithfully to 
record the various works in which he has 
been engaged, the failures as well as the 
successes, detailing: the causes of both — 
for we frequently learn more from the for- 
mer than from the latter. I believe I have 
in this book faithfully done this." ,4 I, how- 
ever, most deeply regret that I have not 
done more. I return my most fervent 
thanks to the Almighty that he, out of 
his great mercy, has allowed me to do the 
little I have done; and I most devoutly hope 
that he, through his son Jesus Christ, will 
pardon my shortcomings ; and I say with 
all reverence, Bless the Lord for all his 
mercies ! M 

Your pen, happily, is by no means idle. 



22 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

The pen of a ready writer has not unfre- 
quently been in hand at this age. Euripi- 
des, the tragic poet, composed his Orestes, 
which for the first time won the first prize ; 
Augustine finished his great work, the City 
of God ; Cherubim published an opera ; and 
Galileo, just before becoming totally blind, 
made that celestial discovery known as the 
moon's librations. 

Who knows but that some promotion 
awaits you, or that some new study will be 
taken up ? At seventy-three Innocent X 
was elected Pope; Count de Maurepas be- 
came adviser to Louis XVI ; and Mrs. 
Schimmelpenninck began committing He- 
brew psalms to memory, which became a 
delight and solace to her in the night 
watches. If seized with military ardor, you 
will call to mind Field-Marshal Bliicher, 
who, at seventy-three, commanded the Prus- 
sians in the battle of Ligny; and another 
field-marshal, Count Schwerin, who, still 
fiery as ever, under Frederick the Great at 
the battle of Prague seized the colors, and, 



SEVEXTY-THREE. 23 

dashing: forward, called out to his recri- 
ment: Herein, meine Kinder ! On, my chil- 
dren. 

" The good fight of faith has more attrac- 
tions," say you. From the pulpit there is 
indeed a vast amount of firing, but much of 
it is far from being belligerent. Charles 
Simeon, of Cambridge, at this age published 
sermons filling twenty-one volumes. " Hav- 
ing completed this day," wrote George 
Burder, kk my seventy-third year, I am un- 
willing it should pass by without a memo- 
randum — without an Ebenezer." "I have 
finished this day a course of fourteen ser- 
mons on Providence, which have occupied 
most of my Sabbath mornings since Decern- 
ber 12." But John Wesley, the paragon of 
clerical activity, enters in his journal : Wk I 
am seventy-three years old, and far abler 
to preach than I was at three and twenty." 
" I feel and grieve, but by the grace of God 
I fret at nothing." Such a man might be 
ready, not unadvisedly, to live a considerable 
part of his life over again. Would you wish 



24 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

to do it ? Dean Swift, a scandal to the 
Christian ministry, for a long time professed 
to desire the day of his death, and often 
cursed the day of his birth. A usual misan- 
thropic farewell with him was, " Good-by ; I 
hope we may never meet again." Bitter 
sarcasm, utterly foreign to the spirit of 
heaven, characterized the man, and creeps 
into obituary verses which he wrote, en- 
titled, "On the death of Dr. Swift": 

From Dublin soon to London spread, 
'Tis told at court the Dean is dead ! 
And Lady Suffolk, in the spleen, 
Runs laughing up to tell the Queen ; 
The Queen so gracious, mild, and good, 
Cries, " Is he gone ? 'tis time he should ! " 

When the dean died, at seventy-three, there 
was a young man living, twenty years of 
age, whose life and occupation at that time 
were as widely variant as could well be from 
his character and profession in later days 
when the slave-trader had become a devoted 
clergyman. On nearing this anniversary 
John Newton wrote : " I have now almost 



SE VENTY- THREE. 2$ 

reached my seventy-third yearly milestone. 
What dangers I have escaped, or been 
brought through ! If my heart would jump 
to be within three miles of you, why does it 
not jump from morning till night to think 
that I am probably within three years of see- 
ing the Lamb upon the throne, and joining 
in the praises of the blessed spirits of the 
redeemed, who behold him without a veil or 
a cloud, and are filled with his glory and 
love ! " 

Happy, happy man ! For such a one to 
remain here so long is not growing old ; it 
is growing in grace; it is clinging closer to 
the Ancient of Days as earthly friends be- 
come fewer ; and, while weaknesses seem to 
multiply, it is finding out more and more of 
the all-sufficiency there is in the Everlast- 
ing Arms. Infirmities need not be much 
thought of, so we are growing strong in 
faith, hope, and love, and a well-grounded 
assurance of entering soon upon a more joy- 
ous intimacy with Him who is the same 
yesterday, and today, and forever. 



SEVENTY-FOUR. 



" I stand upon the mount of God 

With sunlight in my soul ; 
I hear the storms in vales beneath, 

I hear the thunder roll ; 
But I am calm with thee, my God, 

Beneath these glorious skies ; 
And to the height on which I stand 

Nor storm nor clouds can rise." 

If toward sunset, it is yet a resplendent 
hour. The chief occasion for congratula- 
tions today is the radiant hope you enter- 
tain. Friends do not hear you murmur 
because unable to walk quite as briskly as 
formerly, and unable to lift weights quite so 
heavy ; but if there were more dimness of 
vision, and if some clouds were round about, 
it would not disprove ascent well up toward 
heaven. I recall the account which a tourist 
in Madeira Q-ives of his climbing a hieh 
mountain. When near the summit, finding 



28 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

himself suddenly enveloped in a dense mist, 
he shouted, and immediately the guide, who 
was in advance, called out cheerily, " Press 
on ; there is light ahead." Pressing on, he 
soon found himself in clear sunshine. The 
aged Christian traveler will find that a few 
steps more lead into a region quite above 
the clouds. 

The advanced life of a believer may be 
highly serviceable for the world that now is, 
and for that which is to come. 

" Years, like acorns from the branches 
Of the giant oak of Time, 
Fill the earth with healthy seedlings 
For a future more sublime." 

What one does at threescore and fourteen 
for the Master often carries with it the 
cumulative good influence of an entire pre- 
ceding life. In some instances all the fac- 
ulties, even the senses included, retain a 
harmony and serviceableness not previously 
surpassed. To no one do the thoughts turn 
more readily than to John Wesley, who 
says of himself : " I have now completed my 



SE VENTY-FO UR. 29 

seventy-fourth year, and, by the peculiar 
favor of God, I find my health and strength, 
and all my faculties of body and mind, just 
the same as they were at four and twenty." 
In the course of the same year (1777) he 
wrote to a friend : " Though I am always 
in haste, I am never in a hurry, because I 
never undertake any more work than I can 
go through with perfect calmness of spirit." 
Though unable to bear just such a testi- 
mony, many a minister at this age continues 
still effective and useful in the pulpit and 
with the pen. John Eliot, the " Apostle of 
the Indians," for instance, published his 
Harmony of the Gospels, and Sydney Smith 
said, " I do not consider my education by 
any means finished." 

Women, too, in full proportion as com- 
pared with men, may be seen efficiently in- 
ventive and industrious. Mrs. Mary Delany, 
whose published letters have been much 
admired, invented paper mosaics ; the Moral 
Sketches of Hannah More came from the 
press ; and Catherine de Parthenav ex- 



30 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

hibited her noble heroism. She was the 
mother of the celebrated Duke de Rohan, 
who, as you recall, was conspicuous in main- 
taining the Protestant cause in the reign of 
Louis XIII. At the fearful siege of Ro- 
chelle, when horseflesh and four ounces of 
bread were the daily rations, she wrote to 
her son " not to let the consideration of their 
extremity prevail on him to do anything to 
the injury of his party, however great their 
sufferings might be." When the city capit- 
ulated she declined to be included in the 
articles laid down, and two years afterwards 
died in prison. 

Clergymen have been spoken of. And 
do we not often at this period, you inquire, 
see laymen retaining a good degree of vigor? 
Certainly. William Hutton, the antiquary, 
who had eight years yet before him, pre- 
pared his autobiography; Lord Jeffrey, who 
had been associated with Sydney Smith and 
others in establishing the Edinburgh Re- 
view, revised the proof sheets of two vol- 
umes of Macaulay's England, suggesting 



SE J EA r T J -FO UR. 3 I 

in matter and expression, besi 
patiently scrutinizing the punctuation. He 
prepared an article for the Review as well. 
Mr. S. F. B. Morse says of Sir Benjamin 
West, the painter, that one would suppose 
him only about five and forty, and that he 
would nimbly run up a flight c 3 at the 

British Gallery. 

It is gratifying to all who know you, my 
friend, that you do not decline practicable 
servi positions. Life will 

ably be lengthened by it — though ex- 
cess of effort tend- tc si life. Vauban, 
Marshal of France, improved three fortified 
places, built thirty-three new fortresses, con- 
ducted fifty-th" . was present in one 
hundred and fifty actions — greater or 
— and no wonder he did not live beyond 
;r. Three da fore this anni- 
siah Quincy began a di one- 
part of his plan for keeping off the invasi 
of old age. " I am soon," he wrote, "about 
to enter my seventy-fifth year. Indolence 
and indifference to labor are the dang rs 



32 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

old men. . . . Deus nobis hczc fecit ; and may 
my mind never fail to think of and refer to 
him with gratitude and love all the blessings 
which, through his bounty, I enjoy." Mr. 
Quincy asked John Adams, when in the 
very last stages of life, how he managed to 
keep his faculties entire to ninety years ? 
The venerable man replied : " By constantly 
employing them. The mind of an old man 
is like an old horse; if you would get any 
work out of it, you must work it all the 
time." It is not improbable that one reason 
for the superior proportional longevity of 
women is that they have a variety of light 
occupations, such as knitting, which occupy 
without tasking. Laziness and longevity 
do not match well. Man was placed in 
paradise not to be idle, but " to dress it and 
keep it ; " and if terrestrial immortality was 
originally contemplated, it was, by divine 
appointment, to be associated with industry. 
Did I not once hear you quote an Arabian 
proverb, the one which says, " The idle are 
not to be reckoned among the living ; they 



SEVEXTY-FOUR. 33 

are a peculiar kind of dead, who cannot be 
buried " ? Nothing is better established by 
general observation than that appropriate 
industry of some kind is indispensable to 
continued health of body and mind, and to 
prolonged life. Voluntary absence of occu- 
pation is blameworthy ; enforced absence is 
a calamity. k ' What disease killed him ? " 
asked Napoleon, when told that an old 
friend, an ex-colonel in the Italian army, 
had died. u That of having nothing to do," 
was the answer. v ' Enough," said Napoleon, 
" even if he had been an emperor ! " 



SEVENTY-FIVE. 



" Years seventy-five ! How thrills my heart 
As memory bears me back, 
To tread again with buoyant steps 
My boyhood's sunny track ! " 

A day of review and largely of pleasant 
memories, my friend. Retrospect often re- 
juvenates a man, sets him in the sunshine 
of early years, and helps him to become the 
fresh, romping, child again. Those bright 
recollections ward off the approaches of 
sadness, and make it easier to " be careful 
for nothing." What if agility be less than 
it was once ! wisdom is greater, and a truly 
cheery, hopeful, religious old age is the very 
childhood of immortality. True, at seventy- 
five the majority of men are unable to 
accomplish more than about three fourths 
or half as much as at forty-five. The power 
of concentration, as well as of combination, 



36 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

is usually much reduced ; yet are decrepi- 
tude of body and mental inefficiency inev- 
itable ? You, my friend, are a living refuta- 
tion of that. If such were the case, Adrian 
II would not have been elevated to the 
papal chair (867) ; nor Palmerston called to 
the post of First Lord of the Treasury 
(1859); nor Thiers to the Presidency of the 
French Republic ; nor would John Quincy 
Adams have stood his ground in Congress 
defending the right of petition, nor, when 
certain resolutions were read, have faced his 
assailant, protesting vigorously: "In reply 
to this audacious, atrocious charge of high 
treason, I call for the reading "of the first 
paragraph of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence. Read it ; read it ! and see what that 
says of the right of a people to reform, to 
change, and to dissolve their government." 
It was not from the failure of his faculties, 
but of his policy, that Prince Metternich 
found himself compelled to resign amidst 
the revolutionary tide then sweeping over 
Europe (1848), when, upon the demand for 



SE VENTY-FIVE. 3 7 

his retirement, he exclaimed, " What ! is this 
the return I get for my fifty years' services ! " 
I rejoice with you that you have no 
occasion to fear the loss of any position 
through party or other revolutions, and that 
you do not seem called upon to attempt 
long journeys or other undertakings at- 
tended with risks. Yet we do not imagine 
that Abraham showed the infirmities of age, 
though he was " seventy-five years old when 
he departed out. of Haran." Wordsworth 
wrote to one of his American correspond- 
ents regarding his journey to London to 
pay his respects to the Queen : " The 
weather was very cold, and I caught an 
inflammation in one of my eyes which 
rendered my stay in the South very uncom- 
fortable. I nevertheless did, in respect to 
the object of my journey, all that was 
required. The reception given me by the 
Queen at her ball was most gracious. Mrs. 
Everett, the wife of your minister, amon^ 
many others, was a witness to it, without 
knowing who I was. It moved her to the 



38 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

shedding of tears. This effect was in part 
produced, I suppose, by American habits of 
feeling as pertaining to a republican govern- 
ment. To see a gray-haired man of seventy- 
five years of age kneeling down in a large 
assembly to kiss the hand of a young woman 
is a sight for which institutions essentially 
democratic do not prepare a spectator of 
either sex, and must naturally place the 
opinions upon which a republic is founded, 
and the sentiments which support it, in 
strong contrast with a government based 
and upheld as ours is." 

Even the world of fine arts has witnessed 
triumphs at this period of life, as when 
Jacopo Sansovino executed two colossal 
statues, which adorn the Giant's Staircase 
at Florence ; and Titian found undiminished 
pleasure in the use of his pencil, princes 
seeking his creations on canvas with emulous 
avidity. He was still enriching Braganza, 
Brescia, and Milan with splendid works, 
besides painting a great number for the 
churches of Venice, as well as for his friends. 



SEVEXTY-FIVE. 39 

It is gratifying to hear you repeat the 
familiar adage, " Never too late to learn." 
So thought Mr. Henry Oxenford, who, at 
about your age, went to Germany for the 
express object of learning the language of 
the country, which he mastered thoroughly. 
He lived to be one hundred. But, further, 
you seem to be acting on the maxim, " Never 
too old to work." That sentiment may well 
become more general. Laborious and re- 
sponsible as is the office of higher judges in 
England, their average age at decease is 
seventy-five, and they usually die in the 
harness. At threescore and fifteen Baron 
Humboldt was a harder-working man than 
are men who follow the plow. 

Scientific and literary labor at this time 
of life is no unusual thing. Count de 
Tressan abridged, and with much spirit re- 
composed, his Chivalric Romances ; Cre- 
billon, an eminent dramatic poet, produced 
his Catalina; Peter S. Duponceau of Phila- 
delphia obtained the Volney prize of the 
French Institute; Dr. Thomas Reid pub- 



40 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

lished his Philosophy of the Intellectual 
Powers (1785); and Leigh Hunt was still 
writing with the same freshness and buoy- 
ancy as characterized his earlier literary 
career. The late Dr. Guthrie says of Mil- 
man : " The old dean is a pattern to us all. 
He tells us he is now seventy-five ; that, 
notwithstanding, he is at work every morn- 
ing at seven o'clock ; that such has been the 
habit of his life ; that he counts the morning 
hours, when the body is recruited by sleep 
and the mind fresh, the precious hours of 
the day for study and acquiring knowledge, 
and that he owes to them chiefly all his 
acquisitions and his position in life." 

Nor is the gentler sex behindhand in 
freshness of mental powers. Sir David 
Brewster pronounced Miss Herschel's Cat- 
alogue of the Stars, etc., " an extraordinary 
monument of the unextinguished ardor of 
a lady of seventy-five in the cause of ab- 
stract science." The brilliant but wretched 
Madame du Deffand at this age wrote : 
" How happy one would be if one could 



SE VENTY-FIVE. 4 1 

throw off one's self as one can throw off 
others ! but one is perforce with one's self, 
and very little in accord with one's self. 
Am I wrong in thinking it a mistake to 
be born ? " She could, however, simulate 
gayety. Speaking of a dinner given her 
by the King of Sweden, then in Paris, she 
says : " They made me sing ' L'Ambassade,' 
and then Madame d'Aioriillon told the Kino; 
to ask me for the sons; of ' The Philoso- 
pliers/ after which she whispered him it 
was by me, and the King, she, and all the 
company cried out as one does at the end 
of a new play, ' The author ! the author ! 
the author ! ' The party broke up at mid- 
night." 

And now for contrasts. A Scottish 
writer, Caroline Baroness Nairn, at seventy- 
five wrote stanzas beginning: as follows 

(1842): 

Would you be young again ? 

So would not I. 
One tear to memory given, 

Onward I'll hie. 



42 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Life's dark flood forded o'er, 
All but at rest on shore, 
Say, would you plunge once more, 
With home so nigh ? 

Mrs. Lucy G. Thurston, of the Sand- 
wich Islands Mission, was nearly seventy- 
five when called upon to stand before an 
audience that filled the church at Honolulu 
one evening. With a clear voice which was 
heard by all she occupied an hour and a half 
in giving reminiscences of early missionary 
life, and in setting forth the achievements of 
the gospel in Hawaii. Many a man may 
well bear testimony as did the eminent 
engineer Brunei at seventy-five. Reviewing 
their wedded life, he wrote to his wife with 
undiminished warmth : " To you, my dear 
Sophia, I am indebted for all my success." 

The manner of viewing the lapse of 
time and the advance of age depends partly 
upon surroundings, partly upon tempera- 
ment, but more upon one's religious con- 
victions. It was the habit of Archbishop 
Usher, a learned, devout, and happy man, 



SE VEXTY-FIVE. 43 

to note annually in an almanac the year of 
his age opposite the clay of his birth. In 
the almanac for 1655 he made the following 
entry : " Now aged seventy-five years. My 
days are full." And presently after, in capi- 
tal' letters, "RESIGNATION? To 
the man of the world a survey of past life 
can yield no great satisfaction. " I have 
always been cited," says Goethe, " as one 
peculiarly favored by fortune, and I will not 
complain or find fault with my course of 
life. But in reality it has been nothing but 
trouble and labor. I can safely affirm that 
in my seventy-five years I have not had four 
weeks of enjoyment. It was the everlasting 
rolling of a stone which required constantly 
to be raised." 

A good proportion, comparatively speak- 
ing, of ministers retain the sound mind in 
a sound body at this period. The Rev. 
Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich composed his 
quaint and vigorous Simple Cobbler of Aga- 
wam (1645); John Newton preached with 
usual force; Dr. Nathaniel Emmons wrote 



44 OUR BIRTHDAYS, 

even a better hand than at thirty-five ; and 
Dr. Charles G. Finney penned his autobiog- 
raphy. The burdens of foreign missionary 
life do not necessarily impair, in any great 
degree, memory or other mental and physical 
powers. In the eighth century Boniface, 
the Apostle of Western Germany, sallied 
forth on a new and hazardous missionary 
enterprise, but the crown of martyrdom 
awaited him. The sunset of Dr. William 
Goodell (1867) was at seventy-five, and was 
pleasantly characteristic of the man. There 
came a gift from a friend at a distance, with 
a note dated on his birthday, February 14. 
Dictating a brief reply in his customary play- 
ful manner, he said that he " had scarcely ex- 
pected to receive a valentine, but as it was 
sent on the seventy-fifth anniversary of his 
entrance into the world, he should receive it 
as a birthday gift ; " and added that the day 
had been so peaceful and happy it was with 
him " one continued psalm of thanksgiving." 



SEVENTY-SIX. 



" Then deign t' accept the votive lay, 
Incited by this festal day 

We hail with such delight : 
To friendship sacred, and to song, 
Let joy the happy hours prolong, 

And stay their rapid flight. 

k< Xor shall my interested prayer 
Invoke for you one added year 

Than every way may please : 
I wish their number limited 
To those which come accompanied 

With happiness and ease." 

These lines were addressed to Mrs. 
Piozzi, an intimate friend of Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, on the seventy-sixth anniversary 
of her birth. " Happiness and ease " are 
yours ; but you cannot, my friend, be hap- 
pier today than your friends. Not one of 
them but is the more joyous for your hav- 



46 OUR BIRTHDAYS, 

ing been born. The amount of cheerful- 
ness in the world would be sensibly re- 
duced if you had been withdrawn before 
this. When the corresponding year of her 
life had come round, Caroline Herschel said 
that her employment consisted in keeping 
herself good-humored and not disagreeable 
to others. Though not your occupation, 
that seems to be your forte. Nor is it 
a narrow circle of friends who find the 
world the pleasanter for your being in it. 
On his seventy-sixth birthday, Mr. George 
Ticknor made a memorandum headed thus: 
" August i, 1867: Persons with whom I 
have lived in long friendship." Then fol- 
low sixteen names. If you were to make 
out a similar list, would it not be a longer 
one? Mr. Ticknor had other friends, no 
doubt, but those were the old ones. Your 
catalogue of such, I am sure, would be 
longer, for I have never heard of your 
alienating a single friend. 

Not a few who were hale and useful at 
threescore and sixteen come up to recollec- 



SEVENTY-SIX. 47 

tion. In our thoughts — I speak in behalf of 
many — decrepitude has no place today any 
more than it had in the mind of Mr. Cal- 
vert when he was visiting the celebrated 
German poet. He says : " I saw Goethe in 
1825, when he was seventy-six. Neither in 
his countenance nor carriage did he then 
bear any detracting simis of ao;e. He was 
one of those men in talking with whom 
you have no thought of their years. That 
year was the fiftieth anniversary of his ser- 
vice at the court of Weimar, and his august 
patrons had a gold medal struck in his 
honor." We do not deem silver or gold 
precious enough to express our regard for 
the one now in mind. William Beckford, 
the author of Vathck, said at seventy-six — 
though with how much truth we do not 
vouch — that he had never felt a moments 
ennui in his life. We need not look far to 
be assured that hard work and cheerfulness 
are more than possible at this age. At sev- 
enty-six Procter issued (1866) his memoir 
of Charles Lamb; Baron von Humboldt pro- 



48 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

duced one of his celebrated works ; Hannah 
More wrote her work on prayer, the first 
edition of which was sold on the very day 
of its appearance, realizing fifteen thou- 
sand dollars ; and Dr. Muhlenberg wrote his 
Christian " Home, Sweet Home," during the 
return voyage from Europe, where he had 
spent the summer months, being sufficiently 
fresh to enjoy the holiday thoroughly. 

At the same age Innocent XII was elected 
Pope (1699); Dr. William Ellis, with whom 
I had the pleasure of personal acquaintance, 
was at that period of life no less buoyant 
and no less ready than when younger for 
any sacrifice on behalf of the Church of 
Christ in that country for which he felt 
a special affection. " I will go anywhere 
for Madagascar," he said, when mentioning 
some prospective engagements to preach 
or lecture for the mission ; and when Earl 
Russell congratulated him at one of the 
Cheshunt festivals on having returned safely 
from the island, he immediately replied, 
" My Lord, I am ready to go out again." 



SEVENTY-SIX. 49 

Mechanical invention and outdoor activ- 
ity may not unfrequently be seen at this 
time of life. In a letter to his brother, 
Major Cartwright, dated April 24, 1S19, 
Edmund Cartwright says : " I have this clay 
entered into my seventy-seventh year, in as 
good health and spirits, thank God, as I 
have done on any one birthday for the last 
half century! I am moving about mv farm 
from eight o'clock in the morning till four 
in the afternoon, without suffering the least 
fatigue. I sent in my claim to the Board of 
Agriculture for their premium for a cure of 
the mildew on wheat but have not yet heard 
that it was admitted. I don't know whether 
I ever mentioned to you a machine for 
dibbling or planting wheat, which I have 
brought to great perfection. I have also 
a very material improvement on the stocks 
respecting plows and wheel carriages ; but 
of this I shall say nothing till I have brought 
it to the proof, which I hope to do very 
shortly, when you shall be immediately 



SO OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

informed of the result, whether favorable 
or not." 

To you, my friend, the interval between 
six and seventy-six seems short, though the 
contrasts seem marked. Lines in Apple- 
toris Journal, a few years since, gave a clear 
picture of this: 

Two faces on a card I see, 

A New Year's gift of love to me, 

A pretty, childish ministry. 

It were not hard, I think, to fix 
Their ages solely from Time's tricks, 
Without the " Six and Seventy-six." 

" Mamie and Grandma," side by side, 
And seventy years betwixt them glide — 
A bubbling fount, an ebbing tide ; 

A morning beam — a sunset ray; 

A bud — a blossom in decay; 

A rippling mouth — and lips that pray ; 

A waxen brow — a furrowed face; 
Defiant smiles — and looks of grace ; 
And contrasts more and more I trace ! 

The child sees seventy years as far 

Beyond, to her, yon distant star, 

And marvels what their mysteries are ; 



SEVENTY-SIX. 51 

These to the wearied eyes appear 
A fleeting mist, a shadowy sphe 
And briefer than one waiting year. 

Mamie and grandma — Hope and Faith 
Translated by one sunny^ breath — 
And this to me the picture saith. 

You have spoken to me of ministerial 
longevity, and it would be strange in: 

if no professional interest were felt in that 
subject. A large number of men might be 
mentioned who, at this as;e, have continued 
effective labor in the pulpit and with the 
pen. Two of the many such instances 
occur tome. William jay, of Bath, England, 
preached from the word Ebenezer at the 
Jubilee of the London Missionary Society, 
having preached in the same place, Surry 
Chapel, and on a similar occasion, 6 
six vears before. The Rev. George Burder 
wrote : " I bless God for enabling me to 
preach every Sabbath morning through 
the whole year. I thank the Lord that 

enabled me to compose twelve 
mons for the aged, a sort of book much 



5^ OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

wanted for the poor and more ignorant." 
One of that family of most estimable Chris- 
tians and sweet singers — a sister of Fran- 
ces Ridley Havergal — sent lines to her 
father on his seventy-sixth birthday, closing 
thus — and with these I close : 

Now a time for rest is thine 

In the land of Beulah's shine, 

Where the angels come and go, 

Bringing help and hope, and low 

Sweet echoes of the heavenly chime, 

Cheering on the flight of time. 

Oh, may health and peace be given, 

Till the ties of earth be riven, 

And this birthday happy be 

With the light of heaven on thee ! 



SEVENTY-SEVEN. 



Thus seventy years and seven have slipped away 

In holy calm, and unperceived decay. 

— R. N. Cust. 



Why call it decay, mv friend ? Change 
there is, indeed, but the sun declining in 
the west does not suggest any less of beauty 
or of value. It is with admiring gaze that 
we contemplate serenity and grandeur in 
closing hours. No pen or pencil has yet 
done justice to the exquisite tints often 
witnessed at that time of day. I must say, 
and with no conscious professional bias, 
that some of the most pleasing specimens 
of a calm luster, which seemed to be a fore- 
gleam of the endless day — the day without 
a yesterday or a tomorrow 1 — that I have 
witnessed or read of, have been in the Chris- 



x Dics sempiternus, cui non cedit hesternus, quern non urget 
crastinus. — Atigv.stiiie. 



54 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

tian ministry, and among those well beyond 
threescore and ten. On the seventy-sev- 
enth birthday of the Rev. R. S. Storrs, D.D., 
of Braintree, Mass. (1864), the following were 
among the truthful stanzas sung: 

The star of Hope, the staff of Faith, 
Illumes his path, confirms his way; 

His hoary head a splendor hath, 
That brighter grows in life's decay. 

So, honored Pastor, 'tis with thee; 

Thanks for thy life so kindly given ; 
Long may thy grateful people see 

Thy years exceed their seventy-seven. 

John Wesley's record runs thus : " I can 
hardly think that I am entered this day 
into the seventy-eighth year of my age. 
By the blessing of God I am just the same 
as when I entered the twenty-eighth. This 
hath God wrought, chiefly by my constant 
exercise, my rising early, and preaching 
morning and evening." A short time pre- 
vious he had written to a friend, " I can face 
the north wind at seventy-seven better than 
I could at seven-and-twenty." Only nine 



SE VEXTV-SE J EX. 5 5 

days before that year closed, he said, " I do 
not remember to have felt lowness of spirits 
for one quarter of an hour since I was born." 
No wonder he lived to be eighty-eight. The 
excellent Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, was 
still vigorous and cheerful. He wrote : " I 
enter my seventy-eighth year today. I never 
expected to live so long ; I can scarcely be- 
lieve I am so old. I have as yet known 
nothing of the infirmities of age, though I 
have seen a good old age. I know, how- 
ever, it will all be ordered well." Xot a 
few missionaries have, at this age, been toil- 
ing on with unfaltering loyalty and hope- 
fulness. One such was David Zeisberger, 
who gladly headed a colony of his beloved 
Indians, which established itself in the Tus- 
carawas Valley, Ohio ( i 79S). 

True, most aged people become con- 
scious, to some extent, of diminished men- 
tal elasticity and vigor. And vet it is no 
very unusual thing for mental and profe 
sional activity to continue without marked 
abatement. December 3, 1S44, John Ouincy 



50 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Adams made the motion which he had 
made year after year in Congress, for the 
repeal of the gag rule, and the motion was 
carried. " Blessed, forever blessed be the 
name of God ! " he wrote, after recording 
the event. One is tempted to say that in 
your case seventy-seven denotes only two 
times seven. Robert Simson, the eminent 
mathematician who, for about fifty years, 
was a professor in the University of Glas- 
gow, having solved a difficult problem on 
his birthday, made this memorandum : 

14 October, 1764 
14 October, 1687 

Scil. Anno ^Etatis. Deo Opt. Max. benignissimo 
Servatori Laus et Gloria. 

It was at this age that Izaak Walton 
published his Life of George Herbert ; Peter 
S. Duponceau published his Dissertation on 
the Chinese Language ; and Mrs. Mercy War- 
ren, a sister of James Otis, published her 
History of the American Revolution, in three 
volumes. 



SEVENTY-SEVEN. 5 7 

The manner of celebrating the anniver- 
sary may, of course, be appropriately as 
varied as the condition and tastes of those 
who round out eleven times seven. It was 
a happy device of Mozart's widow and son to 
give a concert on the occasion of Havdn's 
seventy-seventh birthday, and the cantata, 
which the young Mozart nobly composed 
in honor of his father's immortal rival, 
occupied three hours. The seventy-eighth 
year of James Montgomery's life was ush- 
ered in by a little fete champetre which a 
neighboring friend, Mrs. Mitchell, got up. 
A select party accompanied the poet from 
his house to the lawn, where he planted a 
beech sapling with the aid of his friend, 
who said: " I thank you, my dear sir. May 
you see many winters' snow upon its naked 
branches, and spring renewals of its beau- 
tiful foliage ! " The next day he sent appro- 
priate verses to Mrs. Mitchell, suggested by 
the %k fair beechen tree." 

Kiopstock improved the anniversary by 
engraving on the tombstone of his wife two 



58 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

sheaves of wheat, with the words, " We shall 
ripen in heaven." The near reunion and 
endless advancement of believers is indeed 
an anticipation that gilds a period which 
otherwise might sometimes be somber. You 
have warm congratulations, my friend, today, 
that advanced years have brought, not de- 
crepitude, but clear Christian foresight and 
an assured hope of a blessed immortality. 
What thanks are due to the God of all 
grace for the contrasts which our luminous 
faith presents to the gloom of heathenism ! 
Titus Pomponius Atticus, the cultured and 
wealthy friend of Cicero, having reached 
seventy-seven without sickness, finding him- 
self attacked with a slight disease, resolved 
to end his days by refusing all food, and 
thus effected suicide (B.C. 32). I turn to 
sick rooms like that of Hannah More at 
the same age, though years before her de- 
cease. For more than six months she was 
confined to her bed by a dangerous attack, 
and for a twelvemonth did not leave her 
room. Through the whole her mind was 



SE I ENTY-SE I r EM 59 

stayed upon the Saviour, and was kept in 
peace. " Were it in my power." she would 
say, " to determine whether to live or die, 
and could I determine either by the lifting 
up of my hand, I would not dare to do it." 
Instead of dwelling upon her trial, which 
was extremely severe, she was intent on re- 
lief for the needy in her neighborhood ; and 
who will undertake to say that that was 
not remedial to herself ? Beneficence is 
the genuine elixir of life. You have ob- 
served — and nothing is plainer — that self- 
pity and complaining will seriously shorten 
any one's life. So will a churlish and re- 
sentful temper. The man who would see 
a 2*ood old acre must be ready to forgive 

CD CD J CD 

" until seventy times seven." 



SEVEXTY-EIGHT. 



Eye hath not seen, tongue hath not told. 

And ear hath not heard it sung. 
How buoyant and bold, though it seems to grow old, 

the heart forever young: 
Forever young — though life's old age 

Hath every nerve unstrung; 

The heart, the heart is a heritage 

That keeps the old man young. 

— Tufiper. 

A joyful morning this, my dear friend ! 
I do not say mv aQ-ed friend, for you have 
little to remind one of old ao;e. Nerves are 
not unstrung, and as for the inner self, what 
but youth is there ? Blessed thought that 
the soul may keep young forever! 1 It 
is remarkable, too, that so little physical 
loss is sometimes apparent. Many a one 
has in this respect resembled you. Bishop 
Daniel Wilson, of Calcutta, at seventy-eight 

1 Anima non sei - . — 



62 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

performed a diocesan visitation with sur- 
prising energy and success, notwithstand- 
ing it required him to travel thousands of 
miles in the hot climate of India. " Old 
men," says the amiable antiquary, William 
Hutton, " are much inclined to accuse youth 
of their follies ; but on this head silence 
will become me, lest I should be asked : 
' What can exceed the folly of that man, 
who, at seventy-eight, walked six hundred 
miles to see a shattered wall ? ' Yet such a 
journey did he undertake in order to inspect 
the Roman wall in England, that united 
work of Agricola, Hadrian, and Severus. 

On Goethe's birthday, August 28, 1827, 
the Duke of Weimar, with the King of Bava- 
ria, came into his study, the King bringing 
the Order of the Grand Cross. Etiquette 
did not allow a subject to accept such an 
honor without permission from his own sov- 
ereign. The poet, turning to Karl August, 
said, " If my gracious sovereign permits." 
Thereupon the Duke called out, Die alter 
Kerl ! mac he dock kein dummes Zeug ! 



SE VENTY-EIGHT. 63 

" Come, old fellow, no nonsense." Miss 
Herschel's services to the science of as- 
tronomy were recognized (1828) by the 
presentation of the gold medal of the 
Royal Astronomical Society, and in these 
terms : " Resolved unanimously, that a Gold 
Medal of this Society be given to Miss 
Caroline Herschel for her recent reduction, 
to January, 1800, of the Nebulae discovered 
by her illustrious brother, which may be 
considered as the completion of a series of 
exertions probably unparalleled, either in 
magnitude or importance, in the annals of 
astronomical labor." 

To you, my friend, there is spared a 
large measure of bodily and mental health 
and freshness, such as calls up a goodly 
fellowship of the past. I see Galileo (1642) 
preparing a treatise on the secondary light 
of the moon, in which he combats the opin- 
ion of Liceti ; I see Theodore Beza (1597) 
writing a poem full of sparkling vigor, oc- 
casioned by a report which his enemies 
started that he had died, and in his last 



64 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

hour had returned to the Romish Church; 
Goethe whose anniversary I have just re- 
ferred to, not only revising his works, but 
entering upon new scientific researches ; 
and writing to Zelter : " In my garden I 
pass many a delightful hour ; for there I 
collect myself, and through harmony and 
inwardness get many a productive mood ; " 
and Lord Brougham editing Newton's Prin- 
cipia. Voltaire was as industrious as ever. 
Dr. Burney, who visited Ferney in 1770, 
found him bright and active. " The servant 
told me his master was seventy-eight, but 
very well. // travaille, said he, pendant 
dix heures chaqtte jour. 'He studies ten 
hours every day ; writes constantly without 
spectacles, and walks out with only a domes- 
tic, often a mile or two' — Et le voila, la 
das, ' And see, yonder he is ! ' : There is 
a certain naturalness in the French method 
of numeration — soixante-dix-huit, sixty-and- 
eighteen — for at the advanced stages of life 
we incline more and more to reckon by tens 
and by scores. 



SEVENTY-EIGHT, 65 

Conspicuous responsibilities and honors 
have come to men at this age, as for ex- 
ample to Pierre D'Aubusson, Grand Master 
of the Order of St. John, who was appointed 
generalissimo of the forces of the German 
Emperor, the King of France, and the Pope 
(1501), against the Turks. The failure of 
the expedition was due neither to great age 
nor to want of enthusiasm on his part. 
Clement XII had entered his seventy-ninth 
year when he was elected Pope (1730). 

The fourth volume of Dr. Rufus Ander- 
son's History of the Missions of the Ameri- 
can Board was in the hands of the binder on 
the seventy-eighth anniversary of his birth. 
Twesten, Schleiermacher's successor at the 
University of Berlin, was genial and vigor- 
ous still. In January, 1846, John Ouincy 
Adams, then seventy-eight, took an effective 
part in the great debate on the Oregon 
question. The range and accuracy of his 
knowledge on the subject, and the force of 
his statements called forth not a little 
admiration. 



66 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

The artist's hand sometimes retains its 
cunning till this advanced period. Peru- 
gino's skill with the pencil had not fallen 
off ; George Cruikshank seemed to be as 
vigorous as when he was at forty or fifty 
years of age. He worked professionally as 
hard as ever, designing and etching occa- 
sionally, but principally engaged in water- 
colors. 

The poet Arndt, having been chosen 
deputy to Frankfort (1848), was called to 
the tribune, and amidst storms of applause 
responded : " Flattered I do not feel myself, 
but touched by this recognition from the 
delegates and representatives of a great and 
honorable people, whose thoughts and feel- 
ings I have at least shared from my youth. 
What an individual has done and deserved 
is a small matter ; it goes into the millions 
of thoughts and feelings which are the in- 
tellectual development of a great nation, as 
a little raindrop in the ocean." When he 
ceased, the whole assembly, with a three- 
fold Hoch! returned him thanks for the 



SEVENTY-EIGHT. 6? 

great national song, " Was ist cles Deutschen 
Vaterland ? " and requested him to add 
some lines with reference to the events of 
that year. 

Among the Moravians it is customary to 
prepare a garland of evergreen, with bright 
leaves of the laurel interwoven, for every 
anniversary, whether a Christmas or birth- 
day festival, and the symbol suggests not 
only freshness of present joy, but the an- 
ticipation of a return. Please accept such 
a wreath at this time. An unfading crown, 
I trust, awaits you. 

I need not. say to you that the great 
source of disquiet and unhappiness is the 
want of well founded religious trust. With- 
out this the heathen or the nominal Chris- 
tian is alike liable to sad forebodings. The 
Rev. Mr. Hill, of the London Missionary 
Society, said in a letter: " One evening, 
while preaching at Jaghooly to about one 
hundred and fifty persons at my tent door, 
I observed a tall old man approaching, 
leaning on a silver-headed cane. He sat 



68 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

down with the rest, and listened with 
marked attention, and afterwards, address- 
ing me, said : ' Sahib, I have been to every 
holy place in India ; I have consulted all 
the sages and pundits I have met with ; I 
am two years short of eighty, and have not 
found a religion in which I can hope for 
eternity. My remaining days are few ; the 
evening of my life has set in ; and, oh, ' he 
exclaimed with emotion, ' may it please 
God to bring me at the close of my long 
life to know and find a w r ay by which I can 
die in peace ! Do give me a book which 
will tell me this way, and I will read it 
earnestly ! ' I gave him a Gospel, and a 
letter to Rev. Mr. Murray of Chinsurah for 
a New Testament. I also led him by the 
hand into the tent and had an hour's con- 
versation with him, in which I told him 
that he must expect persecution if he em- 
braced the gospel of Christ. I had another 
interview with him, and he heard another 
sermon before I left the place. His name 
was Prankissen Singh, and I have since 



S£ VENT\ '-EIGHT. 69 

learned that he obtained his New Testa- 
ment. Ah ! who can tell how many such 
persons may in the jungles be like him 
thirsting for the waters of life, and endear- 
oring to feel after God, v if haply they may 
find him ! ' " 

You have spoken more than once of 
the thousands upon thousands of bright 
contrasts to such in the experience of 
Christians. I recall one or two testimonies 
from this same period of life. The Rev. 
John Angell James, late of Birmingham, 
England, in his volume on Christian Hope 
said : " In the seventy-eighth year of my 
life, and in the fifty-third of my ministry, 
I have no need of a special revelation to 
assure me that I must shortly put off this 
my tabernacle ; but by the course of nature 
this cannot be far off. The shadows of 
evening are gathering thick and fast 
around me, and I find it most consoling, 
on the border country of the world unseen, 
to go forward into what would otherwise be 
a dark unknown, guided and cheered by a 



JO OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

hope full of immortality." So, too, William 
Gouge — the father of Rev. Thomas Gouge, 
the benefactor of Wales. It was his prac- 
tice to read fifteen chapters in the Bible 
every day — five early in the morning, five 
after dinner, and five before retiring at 
night. He had many offers of higher pre- 
ferment, but declined them all, saying that 
his greatest ambition was to go from Black 
Friars to heaven; and thither he went at 
the age of seventy-eight, in the year 1653. 
Just before his departure he often said : 
" I am willing to die, having, I bless God, 
nothing to do but die ; " and he called 
death his best friend next to Jesus Christ. 



SEVENTY-NINE. 



How old am I? You must tell — 

Just as old as I seem to you ! 
Nor shall I a day older be 

While life remaineth, and love is true. 

So wrote Mrs. J, C. R. Dorr; and, in the 
line of her definition, you are my youth- 
ful friend. Many congratulations on this 
seventy-ninth or twenty-ninth anniversary, 
call it which you please ! You began early 
to take a tonic which I think must have 
been compounded thus : 

Good will, ) 

~, , , r equal parts, ad libitum. 

Cheerfulness, ) l r 

Humor, quant., suff. 

It has been taken with meals and be- 
tween meals, and should be labeled, w * Lon- 
gevity assured. n 

But your activity of mind and body 
is not wholly peculiar. Lord Palmerston 



72 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

never worked harder than he did at this 
age. A friend asked him, one day, when 
he considered a man to be in the prime of 
life. He replied instantly, " Seventy-nine." 
" But," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, 
"as I have just entered my eightieth year, 
perhaps I am myself a little past it." It 
was, you remember, at that time of life that 
Sir William Herschel wrote his papers 
on the universe ; and Sir Benjamin West 
painted one of his best works. Paolo 
Farinto gives his own age as seventy-nine 
on a large picture in San Georgio Maggiore 
at Verona. That was the age at which 
Camillus was for the fifth time elected 
Dictator, John Peter Caraffa elected Pope 
(Paul IV), the fire still in his eye; and Ben- 
jamin Franklin, after a sojourn of more 
than eight years in France, returning to 
the United States, was still able, though a 
sufferer, to serve his country. As for John 
Wesley, we look for some token of vigor all 
along the seventies, and upward. This is 
one of his memoranda: "1782, Friday, June 



SE VENTY-NINE. 73 

28. I entered into my eightieth year, but, 
blessed be God ! my time is not ' labor and 
sorrow.' I find no more pains or bodily 
infirmities than at five and twenty." 

I need not say it has long been recog- 
nized that the inner and the outer self may 
fail to correspond. Two hundred years be- 
fore the Christian era Plautus said, " Though 
his hair looks white he is by no means 
old in mind." 1 Such men and women 
make us fall in love with old age — a 
period which has enjoyments all its own, 
enjoyments which stand connected more 
with character and less with surroundings. 
Chancellor Kent wrote to Lord Denman 
(1S42): "I am now far advanced in the 
seventy-ninth year of my age, and though 
I am, as I always have been, healthy and 
active, I am not without gentle admonitions, 
of late, of my very advanced life. As I re- 
tired from the New York Court of Chan- 
cery at the age of sixty, the Commentaries 
are the fruit of my subsequent leisure, and 

1 Si albus capillus hie videtur, neutiquam ingenio est senex, 



74 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

together with chamber business, have given 
me sufficient occupation ever since ; and I 
may truly acid, as a fact pleasant to be 
known, that the last eighteen years of my 
life have afforded me the most agreeable 
and the most profitable employment." To 
Daniel Webster, not very long after, he 
wrote : " I am indeed in my eightieth year, 
but, thank God, I am wonderfully well and 
active, and my ardor for reading, and my 
susceptibilities are, I think, as alive as ever 
to the charms of nature, of literature, and 
society. . . . My reading is regular and 
constant ; all the reports of law decisions as 
fast as I can procure them, all the periodi- 
cals foreign and domestic, and old literature 
and new books are steadily turned over." 
" In my eightieth year," writes Baron 
Humboldt, " I am still enabled to enjoy 
the satisfaction of completing a third edition 
of my work, remodeling it entirely to meet 
the requirements of the present time." At 
the same period Lord Teignmouth pub- 
lished Octogenarian Rhymes in two sets ; 



SE VENTY-NIXE, 7 5 

one on " Gospel Truth, or the Religion of 
the Bible ; " and the other, " God is Love." 
The father of Maria Edgeworth, in conver- 
sation with her, spoke of the later years of 
his life as altogether the happiest, and pleas- 
antly said that, " if he were permitted to re- 
turn to earth in whatever form he misjht 
choose, he should, perhaps, make the whim- 
sical choice of reentering the world as an 
old man." 

Age is not so much a matter of years as 
of results. The chief question would seem 
to be what a person is, rather than how long 
one has been livings The decisive mirror 
for reflecting the true image, as comely or 
wrinkled, is found in the two Testaments, 
instead of the family record bound between 
them. A character formed under the influ- 
ence of that blessed volume, and a strong 
desire to make known the contents of that 
book throughout the world, will always pro- 
mote vitality, and will make others think 
of anything sooner than of decrepitude. 
John Vine Hall did not feel old, nor seem 



76 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

so to others, when he made the record : 
" This day, by the mercy of God, I com- 
mence my eightieth year, in full bodily 
health, and vigor of mind, surrounded by 
every comfort. Long before the dawning 
of the day my heart was lifted to God in 
praise. In my dream I had been prais- 
ing God with most rapturous feelings ; I 
was quite overwhelmed with ecstasy at his 
mercy toward me." Nari, a distinguished 
Italian historian of the sixteenth century, 
speaks of his approaching birthday thus : 
" Having to begin to climb with my staff 
the steep ascent of the eightieth year." Not 
so does it seem to you, but rather a level 
and charmingly shaded avenue ; and you 
prefer to muse calmly with John Keble : 

How quiet shows the woodland scene ! 

Each flower and tree, its duty done, 
Reposing in decay serene, 

Like weary men when age is won ; 
Such calm old age as conscience pure 

And self-commanding hearts insure, 
Waiting their summons to the sky, 

Content to live, but not afraid to die. 



EIGHTY. 

His fourscore years 
Sat lightly on him, for his heart was glad, 
Even to its latest pulse, with that best love, 
Home nurtured and reciprocal, which girds 
And garners up in sorrow and in joy. 

— Mrs. Sigoumey. 

Yours is a glad heart today, my friend ; 
and so is mine ; and so, on your account, 
is the heart of many another. Congratula- 
tions will pour in from not a few quarters. 
All of us are delighted to see so much less 
of autumn than of spring. The color of 
the hair and the number of furrows are 
not to be accounted decisive points. To 
us a beautiful evening with its bright stars 
has les-s of night about it than a dreary, 
leaden morning ; and the most attractive 
kind of youthfulness shows itself in an 
affectionate temper at fourscore. 

A certain French physiologist pictures 



78 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

the ideal man of the future as so observant 
of the laws of his being that he will keep 
the machine in excellent repair, and his 
old age will not even begin till eighty. 
There always has been here and there one 
with whom we find it difficult to associate 
the popular idea of longevity. Beza, who 
could repeat Paul's Epistles in Greek at 
eighty, did not seem old ; nor did Cato, 
who then set about learning Greek. Who 
ever thought of calling Elizabeth Montague 
old, retaining, as she did at fourscore, her 
wit and beauty not inferior in brilliancy to 
the diamonds she still wore ; or Mrs. Pres- 
ident Madison, her heart more kind, her 
manners more queenly, and her conversa- 
tional power not less charming than at any 
former period ? The eightieth birthday of 
Mrs. Piozzi, previously Mrs. Thrale, was the 
occasion (1820) of a brilliant fete at Bath, 
to which the Salusburys from Wales, and 
friends from all parts of the island gladly 
flocked. A concert, and a supper to be- 
tween six and seven hundred guests, in the 



EIGHT T. 79 

public rooms of Bath, commenced the pro- 
ceedings, and she led off the ball herself at 
two in the morning with her adopted son, 
Sir John Salusbury, dancing, said those who 
were present, with astonishing elasticity and 
true dignity. She afterwards presided in 
an affable way at the supper table, having 
one British admiral on her rio;ht hand and 
another on her left. She translated the 
following lines from the French : 

Arrived at grave and gray fourscore, 
'Tis time to think on life no more : 
Time to be gone ; and therefore I 
Can quit this world without a sigh — 
Without a sorrow, care, or fright, 
Can bid the company good night. 

It is more common to see the French, 
than any other people, ww frisk beneath the 
burden of fourscore. " Old age is not at 
such a discount among; them as anions the 
English and Americans. Those advanced 
in years are not presumed to be of course 
disqualified for social enjoyments or for 
literary labor. La Mothe le Veger in one 



So OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

of his treatises says: "I should but ill 
return the favors God has granted me in 
the eightieth year of my age, should I 
allow myself to give way to that shame- 
less want of occupation which I have 
condemned all my life ; " and he then pro- 
ceeds with his Observations on the Composi- 
tion and Reading of Books. At eighty the 
Great Arnauld, twentieth child of Antoine 
Arnauld, a distinguished advocate, translated 
Josephus; and Buff on was hardly less indus- 
trious than at any earlier period of his life. 
That nation, however, you will say, does 
not monopolize the vivacity of advanced 
years. Very true ; I do not forget it was 
at eighty that Simonides, one of the most 
eminent of Greek lyric poets, bore off his 
fifty-sixth prize in a contest with the Dith- 
yrambic Chorus (B. C. 477); that Varro 
composed his De Re Rustica (B. C. 37); 
that Calderon, ranking among the fore- 
most Spanish poets, composed his last play. 
Hahnemann, founder of the homeopathic 
school of medicine, married at eighty, and 



EIGHTY. Si 

continued professional services for nearly 
a decade after that. Professor Hufeland 

at fourscore, and even beyond, was the 
pride of his profession in Berlin, a city 
where scientific inferiority is soon detected. 
Goethe's sensibilities remained unimpaired; 
no incipient exhaustion or weariness of life 
became apparent, and he was able to give 
himself with freshness to the reconstruction 
of his romance of Wilkelm Meister. 

'' Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, 
Completed Faust wl ears were past. 

These are indeed exceptions; but they show- 
How tar the gulf-stream of our youth may flow 

to the arctic regions of our live 
Where little else than life irvives." 

But surely, say you, at this acre Anglo- 
Saxons show as much mental activity as 
any other nationality. Yes, indeed; we have 
already seen that, and there are plenty 
other illustrative examples. Sir Richard 
Bulstrode, who lived to one hundred and 
one years, when he was eighty comp 
one hundred and eighty-five elegies and 



82 OUR BIRTHDAYS, 

epigrams on religious subjects, which were 
given to the public. November 3, 1874, 
the eightieth anniversary of William Cullen 
Bryant, found him, hale and mentally vigor- 
ous, at his editorial desk in the office of the 
New York Evening Post; and the same 
evening, in his place as Vice-President of 
the Historical Society. 

The senses are sometimes signally 
preserved. Romaine, an eminent English 
divine, could still read small print without 
spectacles. It appears also that delicacy 
of constitution is compatible with efficient 
longevity. Jeremy Bentham, though his 
body was weak, enjoyed remarkable health, 
not suffering for upwards of sixty years 
from any serious indisposition ; and at 
eighty his appearance by no means indi- 
cated such advanced age. During more 
than fifty years he devoted eight, often in- 
deed ten hours daily to study, and adhered 
with punctilious regularity to a certain fixed 
distribution of his time and employments. 
Dr. Archibald Alexander, though a dyspep- 



EIGHTY. 83 

tic through life, continued able to work 
at eighty. 

We should naturally expect that persons 
devoted to the fine arts would cease from 
all attempts at practice before attaining to 
this age, and yet the hand does not neces- 
sarily become tremulous, nor the eye fail to 
discern the beauty of figure and coloring. 
At fourscore Tintoretto and Gentile Bellini 
were busy with their pencils ; Rachel Van 
Pool, so celebrated in Holland ■ — indeed 
she enjoyed a European reputation — exe- 
cuted pictures as neatly and highly finished 
as at thirty. Elizabeth Lebrun painted the 
portrait of her niece, Madame de Riviere, 
which was so remarkable for vigorous color- 
ing and lively expression that it has been 
preserved among the best specimens of her 
powers. It was at fourscore that Sir Chris- 
topher Wren finished St. Paul's Cathedral. 

Nor is the vigor requisite for important 
positions necessarily wanting. Moses was 
a man of eighty when he conducted nego- 
tiations with Pharaoh, and led Israel out of 



84 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Egypt ; and Phocion exerted a powerful in- 
fluence among the excitable and demoral- 
ized Athenians. Not far from his eightieth 
anniversary John de Brienne was elected 
Latin Emperor of the East (A. D. 1228); 
and upon the accession of James II, Samuel 
Waller, the poet, was elected to Parliament. 
At a more recent date Lord Campbell was 
raised to the Chancellorship ; and Talley- 
rand was just completing his service as 
Ambassador and Minister Plenipotentiary 
to England. 

Resources of mind and power of endur- 
ance sufficient for military leadership have 
been exhibited. Joshua was even older 
than this when called to undertake the 
conquest of Canaan. The Duke of Villars, 
after having quitted his military career for 
many years, took command of the army as 
Marshal General of France, and in a short 
campaign drove the imperial army out of 
the Milanese territory, thus rescuing that 
country from an unexampled severity of 
oppression. This old man at the siege 



EIGHTY. 85 

of Milan being asked his age, answered, 
" Dans peu de jours, j'aurais Mil-anT In 
the campaign of 1807 the French were 
opposed by Count Kamensky, the Russian 
general, then full eighty years old, and it 
was not till after his eightieth birthday 
that the Austrian Field Marshal Radetzky, 
by his campaigns in Italy, acquired a Euro- 
pean reputation as a brave man and a con- 
summate tactician. 

We have lately had a talk about a more 
peaceful profession, and we find that the 
sacred office is beyond doubt favorable to 
longevity. For instance, of the four hun- 
dred and seventeen clergymen mentioned 
in Allen's Biogi'ciphical Dictionary, sixty- 
six lived to be over eighty. Thomas May- 
hew — what young man should despair ! 
— at fourscore was invited by the Indian 
Church on Martha's Vineyard to become 
their pastor (1670). Dr. Samuel Buell, of 
East Hampton, Long Island, rode four- 
teen miles to preach, returning home in 
the evening of the same day which com- 



86 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

pleted his eightieth year (1796); and the 
Rev. Timothy M. Cooley, D.D., of Gran- 
ville, Massachusetts, whom I well remem- 
ber, on his eightieth birthday said to his 
people that he could " hear, see, and speak 
with the facility of early manhood, and had 
never been confined to his bed, or his 
room, by sickness a single day for three- 
score and fourteen years." 

Other hale octogenarians, and some 
of them missionaries, might be named, as 
David Zeisberger, who labored indefatiga- 
,bly for sixty years among the Indians of 
North America, and had not relinquished 
benevolent toil when his eightieth birth- 
day arrived. Titus Coan, at the Hawaiian 
Islands, erect, and with alert step, con- 
tinued his labors. Friends asked him to 
write an autobiography, which he did. In 
an extended letter to his children he says : 
" I am this day fourscore years old. God 
gave me a happy childhood, a cheerful 
youth, a vigorous manhood, and now a 
calm old age. My health is good, my 



EIGHTY. 87 

spirits buoyant, and my heart is happy in 
the companion of my choice. My faith is 
firm, my hope anchored, and my love for 
you all deathless as the soul." A visitor 
at Ban de la Roche, when Oberlin was 
eighty, says of him: "I never knew so well 
what the grace of courtesy was till I saw 
this remarkable man. He treats the poor- 
est people, and even the children, with an 
affectionate respect." ik He is one of the 
handsomest old men I ever remember to 
have seen, still vigorous in mind and spirit, 
delighting in his parish, full of fervent 
charity." 

Such men suggest a recipe for lon- 
gevity — cheerfulness, hopefulness, kindli- 
ness. Nobility of character and generosity 
of heart form a powerful tonic. " Now 
Barzillai was a very aged man, even four- 
score years old ; and he had provided the 
kino- of sustenance while he lav at Alalia- 
naim ; for he was a very great man." The 
philanthropic Abbe de Saint- Pierre devoted 
his life to active beneficence, often quoting 



88 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

the remark, " The mania for a monastic 
life is the small pox of the mind." He 
spent his whole income in acts of charity; 
not in mere alms, but in helping the poor 
to help themselves, always making it his 
object permanently to benefit those whom 
he aided — one of the wisest forms of kind- 
ness. At the age of eighty he said, " If life 
is a lottery for happiness, my lot has been 
one of the best." Sir Moses Montefiore 
had well turned his eightieth year (1865) 
when distressing news came asjain from 
Palestine, and again roused his compas- 
sionate energies. Three thousand pounds 
were sent in advance to give temporary 
assistance, while Sir Moses and some of 
his friends followed with the balance. 

You have remarked that the despondent, 
the grasping, the niggardly, need not expect 
to live out half their days. To grovel is 
to shorten as well as darken one's days. 
Well directed culture is anything but un- 
friendly to long life. It is not the more 
stupid, even of beasts, that live longest. 



EIGHT V. 89 

The horse outlives the donkey, and the 
donkey the swine. 

It must be confessed that occasionally 
repellent representatives of fourscore are 
met with. " Talking with Northcote ," savs 
Hazlitt, " is like conversing with the dead. 
You see a little old man, eighty years of 
age, pale and fragile, with eyes gleaming 
like the lights that are hung in tombs. He 
seems little better than a ffhost, is almost 
as unsubstantial, and hangs wavering and 
trembling on the very edge of life. You 
would think that a breath would blow him 
away, and yet what fine things he says!" 
" Yes," observed some one, " and what ill- 
natured things ; they are all malicious to 
the last word." Lamb called him " a little 
bottle of aqua fortis, which, you know, 
corrodes everything it touches." " Except 
gold," interrupted Hazlitt ; " he never drops 
upon Sir Joshua or the great masters." 

It is a relief to open the journal of the 
Countess von Voss (1809), who remained 
sixty-nine years at the Prussian Court, and 



90 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

was mistress of the household : " Today I 
have completed eighty years of age, which 
the merciful God has permitted me to live. 
When I think how our life slips by like a 
dream, and think also of all the sorrow and 
misery I have lived through, I cannot suffi- 
ciently repeat to myself that all that God 
sends us is only ordered for our true, that 
is, for our future and eternal welfare. I was 
really confused and overwhelmed, today, with 
love and kindness. There was music dur- 
ing dinner ; I sat between their Majesties ; 
they drank my health, and all day long 
did me honor and kindness. A number of 
people came to congratulate me, and all 
heaped presents and attentions upon me." 
When Montgomery entered his study on 
the morning of his eightieth anniversary, 
he found an elegant easy-chair of carved 
walnut, and, what was to him of more value 
than any personal luxury, a purse of fifty 
sovereigns for the " Moravian Fund," and 
sixty sovereigns for the " Aged Female 
Society " — gifts which could only flow 



EIGHTY. 91 

from the delicate perceptions and Christian 
sensibilities of woman. "Thanks, thanks, 
thanks," exclaimed the venerable old man ; 
11 thrice and four times thanks to my birth- 
benefactors for their precious tokens of 
jd will ' to a poor octogenarian.' ' In 
:.. - : milar manner the eightieth birthday 
of Dr. Muhlenberg was signalized bv the 
entation of a handsome sum (S20,ooo), 
toward an endowment fund for his hospital 
at St. Johnland. 

And what are the probabilities of life at 
ge? you ask. It would be superfluous 
in me to speak of probabilities at the time 
of birth. Out of every five hundred who 
came into the world the same year with 
you, there was a reasonable prospect that 
only one would survive to such an advanced 
birthday as we now celebrate. In view of 
manifold liabilities it is indeed wonderful 
that any reach this point. You have often 
expressed surprise regarding your own con- 
tinuance on earth, and that is a common 
sentiment. But to answer your inquiry : 



92 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

In the first place, at eighty years of age 
there are nearly three women living to one 
man, and the likelihood of their continued 
life is somewhat greater than that of men, 
other things being equal ; but vital statistics 
show that in general the probable duration 
of life is now reduced to four years. 

You accept Hannah More's testimony 
at fourscore : " When and whither belong 
to Him who governs both worlds. I have 
nothing to do but to trust. I bless God 
I enjoy great tranquility of mind, and am 
willing to depart and be with Christ when 
it is his will ; but I leave it all in his 
hands who doeth all things well." 



EIGHTY-ONE. 



Thus on the cheek of age shall rest 

The light of days gone by, 
Calm as the glories of the west 

When night is drawing nigh. 

— Bernard Barton. 

It is anything but gloom that settles on 
your countenance today. Bright scenes in 
the past rise up to view. The remembered 
of former years, social and solitary, 
sacred and secular, the persons and places 
with which the}' were connected, come 
thronging to the mind and bring a glow 
to your face. 

Living friends, many comforts and many 
congratulations help to make this, I have 
no doubt, a happier anniversary than you 
had anticipated. Little tokens of remem- 
bram m bring a large satisfaction. Our 

lady friends are very ingenious in this line 
of thir. Miss Maria Edgeworth wrote 



94 OUR BIRTHDAYS, 

(1847) to Prescott, the historian, about "a 
very trifling offering for you, my dear sir, 
which, trifling as it is, I hope and trust 
your good nature will not disdain — half 
a dozen worked marks to put in books ; 
and I intended those to be used in your 
books of reference when you are work- 
ing, as I hope you are, or will be, at your 
magnum opus, the History of Spain. One 
of these marks, that which is marked in 
green silk, ' Maria Edgeworth, for Prescott 's 
works,' is my own handiwork, every stitch, 
in my eighty-first year — eighty-two almost. 
I shall be eighty-two the first of Janu- 
ary. I am proud of being able, even in 
this trifling matter, to join my young 
friends in this family in working souve- 
nirs for the great historian. " One of the 
sons of Queen Victoria was born May 1, 
1850, and before night Prince Albert vis- 
ited the Duke of Wellington to congratu- 
late him on his eighty-first birthday, and 
to report to him that as a token of regard 
the Queen intended to have the royal 



EIGHTY-ONE. 95 

infant baptized by the name of Arthur. 
I need not remind you that the baptis- 
mal name of the Iron Duke was Arthur 
Wellesley. Your name, too, has been 
coupled with more than one such May- 
flower. 

Fifty years ago you looked upon any 
period beyond fourscore as chiefly imply- 
ing infirmities of body and mind, and you 
would not have believed it possible that 
at this age no greater changes would be 
apparent, or that you could be so little 
conscious of them; vet instances of vigor 
at eightv-one are not rare. Mrs. Mary 
Somerville was able to say : " I could still 
see to thread the finest needle and read 
the finest print, but I got sooner tired 
when writing than I used to do. I wrote 
regularly every morning from eight till 
twelve or one o'clock before rising." Luigi 
Cornaro was hearty and elastic, and wrote 
one of his well-known treatises on health. 
There was no tremor in his hand ; nor 
was there in Thomas Clarkson's hand 



g6 OUR BIRTHDAYS, 

when he wrote (March 29, 1844): " I have 
this day entered into the eighty-second 
year of my life, and, alas ! am not fit to 
help the sacred cause much longer." The 
handwriting of this letter was small, neat, 
perfectly legible, without the least token 
of debility. " The day Dr. Beecher was 
eighty-one," writes Professor Stowe, " he 
was with me in Andover, and wished to 
attend my lecture in the seminary. He 
was not quite ready when the bell rang, 
and I walked on in the usual path without 
him. Presently he came skipping along 
across lots, laid his hand on the top of the 
five-barred fence, which he cleared with a 
bound, and was in the lecture-room before 
me." 

Naturally at this age the grasp of the 
pen in authorship is less firm than in 
earlier years, yet even poetic inspiration 
does not necessarily fail. Crebillon, a dis- 
tinguished writer of tragedies in the eight- 
eenth century, ranking next to Corneille 
and Racine, a man who preferred the lib- 



EIGHTY-ONE. 97 

erty of indigence to the sycophancy attend- 
ant upon patronage, produced his tragedy, 
entitled The Triumvirate; and Goethe's fer- 
tility of mind was still such that he com- 
pleted the second part of Faust. He had 
carried with him the general conception 
of the work for sixty years. 

Sir Henry Holland practiced what, as 
a physician, he recommended, free exercise 
in the open air ; making it a point in later 
years to break away from his round of 
patients, and take an extensive tour. He 
writes : " When on the very verge of my 
eighty-second year I have been able with- 
out hindrance, or even fatigue, to reach the 
Northwestern States and upper waters of 
the Mississippi, traveling by land, lake, or 
river more than 3,500 miles during the 
five weeks I passed in the country." Dr. 
Eliphalet Nott, President of Union College, 
was not a sedentary man, and he lived to 
a great age. At the Commencement of 
that college in 1854 came the celebration 
of the fiftieth anniversary of his presidency. 



98 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

He was eighty-one years old, and among 
his "sons" now gathered before him were 
numbers who, having graduated in the first 
days of his presidency, had reached their 
threescore and ten. His address, which 
was somewhat over an hour in length, 
showed no sign of mental decay. Accord- 
ing to his custom it was delivered memor- 
iter, and characterized by a graceful flu- 
ency in which there was no hesitation, 
and no occasion to recall a sentence or a 
word. At eighty-one Lord Palmerston was 
still Prime Minister. 

Whatever decline there may be in other 
respects, ruling sentiments and passions 
often remain in full force. The ambitious 
and imperious Sarah Jennings, Duchess 
of Marlborough, could neither loosen her 
grasp of money nor of a scourge for her 
critics. When at length she was obliged to 
leave the former behind her, it amounted 
to fifteen millions of dollars. This fortune 
was, no doubt, acquired in part by the 
sale of political places and offices ; for, till 



EIGHTY-ONE. 99 

feeble Queen Anne discarded this strong- 
minded woman, the Whig ministry had 
been largely dependent upon her influence. 
Accusations abounded, and at eighty-one 
she took up the pen in her own defense. 
Mrs. Barbauld, too, was far from being 
superannuated, yet was an octogenarian 
when the lines entitled " Life " were 
penned, which close thus : 

Life ! we've been long together 

Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 

'Tis hard to part when friends are dear — 

Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ; 

Then steal away, give little warning, 

Choose thine own time ; 

Say not good night; but in some brighter clime 

Bid me good morning. 

Benjamin Franklin, calmly observant 
and fearlessly honest, never uttered more 
weighty words than in the convention 
for forming a constitution for the United 
States (1787). He was then eighty-one. 
At the close of his speech he moved "that 
henceforth prayers, imploring the assist- 
ance of Heaven and its blessing on our 



IOO OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

deliberations, be held in this assembly 
every morning before we proceed to busi- 
ness ; and that one or more of the clergy 
of this city be requested to officiate in 
that service." 

The man who, up to this period, has 
not learned to recognize and trust an over- 
ruling Providence can count upon little 
beside wretchedness. Lord Camden, when 
visiting Bath for the benefit of the waters, 
lighted on his old political antagonist, 
Welbore Ellis, now Lord Mendip, who, 
although his senior, was in excellent bod- 
ily condition. They were octogenarians ; 
and, meeting in the pump room, Lord 
Mendip said : " I hope you are well, and 
in the enjoyment of a happy old age." 
" Happy!" exclaimed Lord Camden, "how 
can a man be happy who has survived 
all his passions and all his enjoyments?" 
" Oh, my dear lord ! " was the reply, " do 
not talk so ; while God is pleased to en- 
able me to read my Homer in my ordinary 
hours, and my Bible at my better times, 



EIGHTY-ONE. IOI 

I cannot but be thankful and happy." 
The Rev. William Romaine still preached 
three times a week. Two years before the 
decease of Dr. Nathan Bangs, three hun- 
dred of his friends, led by Bishop Janes, 
went in a body to present him with a 
testimonial of their esteem and affection. 
He was then eighty-one. " Dr. Bancs' old 
age," says Bishop Janes, " was beautiful. 
Exempt from official cares, surrounded by 
warm and sympathizing friends, in the 
society of his dutiful and affectionate chil- 
dren who delighted to minister to his 
comfort and pleasure, his declining years 
passed serenely and sweetly away. Like 
the descending sun in the western sky, 
disrobed of his meridian splendors and 
deprived of his noontide fervor, unclouded, 
full-orbed, with mellow radiance we see 
him slowly and serenely descending to 
the horizon of life. Most enchanting was 
the moral beauty with which his cheerful, 
holy, old age was invested." 



EIGHTY-TWO. 



Again, my friend, in memory still 
Our thoughts return to you; 

Again our homage and good will 
We bring at eighty-two. 

When social hearts in kindness meet, 

In friendship warm and true, 
Is there in age an hour so sweet 
To genial eighty-two ? 

— /. H. Dexter. 

There are twenty-four more stanzas, 
which were addressed to the poet Charles 
Sprague (1S71) by a friend who was of pre- 
cisely the same age. Each stanza closes 
with the refrain, eighty-two ; and one, who 
like yourself has occasion for so many 
congratulations, may well accept the twice 
twelve repetitions on such an anniversary. 
More than two dozen friends join in best 
wishes today. 

I do not suppose that you really feel 
much older than you did at a birthday 



104 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

midway between the first and the present 
one. It is not the flight, but only the in- 
cidents of time that we are likely to take 
notice of. Time makes no rustling of 
wings, and he will hardly stop long enough 
to see whether the figures on the new mile- 
stone are twenty-eight or eighty-two. Any 
friend looking at the true date miofht sus- 
pect a mistake in the order of the figures. 

But you are not the only sprightly 
person of eighty-two. After William IV 
had dissolved Parliament, Lord Chancellor 
Eldon wrote to the wife of a new member 
elect : 

" Dear Mrs. Bell: The heart of an old 
gentleman of eighty-two is so overjoyed 
by the intelligence you have been so kind 
as to send him, that he is quite renovated 
in youth, health, and spirits ; and he thinks 
if he had you for his partner, he could go 
down a country dance, as in the days of 
yore, to the tune of ' Bonny Northumber- 
land." When Caroline Herschel was at 
this period, her nephew writes : " She runs 



EIGHTY-TWO. 105 

about the town with me, and skips up her 
two flights of stairs as light and fresh at 
least as some folks I could name who are 
not a fourth part of her age. In the morn- 
ing, till eleven or twelve, she is dull and 
weary ; but as the day advances she gains 
life, and is quite fresh and funny at ten 
or eleven p.m., and sings old rhymes, nay, 
even dances to the great delight of all 
who see her;' Mrs. Piozzi, previously Mrs. 
Thrale, whose name occurs so often in the 
Life of Dr. Samuel fohuson, retained her 
strength of body and mind unimpaired at 
the same period. When past eighty she 
could discern minute features in a distant 
landscape which younger persons failed to 
discover. She appears to have illustrated 
the sentiment of her own lines : 

The tree of deepest root is found 
Least willing still to quit the ground; 
'Twas therefore said by ancient sages 

That love of life increased with years 
So much, that in our later stages, 
When pains grow sharp and sickness rages, 

The greatest love of life appears. 



106 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Friends are gratified that you deem life 
still worth living, and that mental activity 
does not seem to wane. In this regard 
you belong to a goodly company. Watt, 
having invented a machine for copying 
sculpture, distributed among his friends 
some specimens of its performances, jocu- 
larly calling them "the productions of a 
young artist just entering into his eighty- 
third year." Michael Angelo composed son- 
nets, which he sent to Vasari and other 
friends, as the amusement of his old 
age ; Goethe wrote a masterly review of 
the o*reat discussion between Cuvier and 
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire on philosophic zool- 
ogy; Alexander von Humboldt finished his 
Cosmos, and Ranke began his History of 
the World. 

The clerical profession has been re- 
garded as peculiarly favorable to longevity, 
and vital statistics even now confirm that 
opinion, though long pastorates are less 
frequent than formerly. In 1727 Increase 
Mather spoke of being in the eighty-third 



EIGHTY-TWO. 107 

year of his age, and of having been for 
sixty-five years a preacher of the gospel. 
"At eighty-two," as the Rev. Thomas Haweis 
wrote to a friend, " the springs of life are 
so much relaxed, that vigorous exertion 
can hardly be put forth; and yet, through 
a very singular dispensation of that good 
Master who hitherto hath helped me, I am 
still strong to labor, often less fatigued 
than I have been twenty years ago ; and 
my faculties, I am assured, manifesting no 
perceptible decay ; my voice as firm, and 
my articulation as distinct as formerly ; 
and what, above all, I have to bless him 
for, he does not leave his word without 
witness as the power of God to salvation 
to the hearers." Hale and active John 
Wesley also testifies : " By the good provi- 
dence of God, I finished the eighty-second 
year of my age. Is anything too hard for 
God ? It is now eleven years since I have 
felt any such thing as weariness." " At 
half-past eight I preached at St. Agnes to 
the largest congregation I ever saw there. 



I08 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Between one and two I preached in the 
street at Redruth to thousands upon thou- 
sands, and my strength was as my need ; 
yet I was afraid lest I should not be able 
to make all those hear that assembled in 
the evening. But, though it was supposed 
there were two or three thousand more 
than ever were there before, yet they 
heard (I was afterward informed) to the 
very skirts of the congregation, while I 
applied those solemn words, 'One thing 
is needful. ' " 

A peculiar warmth of attachment often 
manifests itself in these advanced years. 
Whether due to a diminished number of 
objects, and hence a greater concentration 
of interest, or whatever the cause may be, 
the fact of such tender and grateful regard 
cannot fail to be noticed. The Baroness 
Bunsen was eighty-two when she acknowl- 
edged (1873): "An event to me has been 
the receiving a letter from Florence Nigdit- 
ingale, in which the strong remembrance 
and affection she expresses to myself have 



EIGHTY-TWO. 109 

deeply touched me. Why should people 
be so kind to me ? I can do nothing for 
them ; but my feelings of sympathy are 
not blunted on any subject, or for any 
person that I ever cared for." 

Some of the most beautiful specimens 
of religious character that I have ever 
known or read of have been found among 
Christian women — women who lived two 
or more years beyond fourscore. Some of 
my earliest recollections relate to a pastor's 
wife, Mrs. Maria Hart, a granddaughter of 
Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the 
Declaration of. Independence. Her hus- 
band, whom she outlived for twenty-eight 
years, was a pastor in Middlebury, Conn. 
She was preeminently a woman of prayer, 
spending much time in her private and 
family devotions, and coming habitually to 
the social and religious meetings of the 
church. She sustained, with the sisters in 
the church, a female prayer meeting for 
forty-seven years, and conducted its exer- 
cises almost uniformly until within a few 



IIO OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

days of her death. Another was Mrs. 
Abigail Stearns, of Bedford, Mass. , who, in 
1858, joined the church of the first-born 
which are written in heaven. She traced 
her pedigree back to the settlement of 
the country through an unbroken line of 
church members ; was the daughter of a 
minister, the sister of a minister, the wife 
of a minister, the mother-in-law of two, 
and the mother of four ministers — one of 
whom was Dr. J. T. Stearns, of Newark, 
N. J.; and another, Dr. W. A. Stearns, late 
President of Amherst College. For seventy 
years she had been a communicant in the 
Congregational Church, and her eleven chil- 
dren became communicants also. 

You are probably familiar with the 
memoirs of Mrs. Grace Bennett, widow of 
Rev. John Bennett, an English Wesleyan 
preacher. It was on her birthday (June 
28, 1797), corresponding to the one which 
you now celebrate, that she wrote : " I have 
been in the school of Christ nearly sixty 
years ; and the nearer I approach eternity, 



EIGHTY-TWO, III 

the more I see the need of a complete 
Saviour. Oh, how I admire the glorious 
plan of redemption by the Son of God! 
O Lord Jesus, I would lie in the dust 
before thee ; may my desires to love thee 
be accepted ! Amen." Mrs. Mary L. Ware, 
who visited Mrs. Barbauld in 1823, says: 
11 Though now eighty-two she possesses 
her faculties in full perfection ; her man- 
ner is peculiarly gentle, her voice low and 
sweet, and she speaks of death with such 
firm hope that I felt as if I were com- 
muning with a spiritual body." For such 
the departure is rather a translation than 
dying. To them it is less a sunset than 
a glorious sunrising. 



EIGHTY-THREE. 



" There's a Providence, and far beyond 
The vast broad land and sea, 
Which hearts forever true and fond 
Adore at eighty-three. 

"In the dewy dawn and blush of day, 
In the grand majestic tree, 
Full in foliage, o'er the sultry way, 
To shelter eighty-three ; 

"While the grapes on clustering vine 
Hang rich and ruddily, 
All by benignant, wise design, 
And shared at eighty-three." 

You, my friend, share both in the shade 
and the grapes. Not a few relatives and 
friends rejoice with you in this anniver- 
sary ; indeed, the whole family circle feel 
honored and favored by the eighty-third 
birthday of one of their number. Here is 
at once a testimony and an inspiration, 



114 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

for we have renewed assurance that a life 
of high aims and of hard work is health- 
ful. Other things equal, the man who is 
loyal to the great end of his being, and to 
the Ancient of Days, will live the longest. 
Such a one has covenant protection ; has 
a conscience at ease, as well as a cheeri- 
ness so friendly to length of days, and to 
an old age the opposite of all that is 
dreary. 

Abraham could not have been an un- 
happy man, when, probably at eighty-three, 
he left Ur of the Chaldees ; and Aaron, no 
doubt, had a consciousness of the divine 
presence, that imparted serene calmness 
and elevated joy, when at the great crisis 
he, with Moses, " spake unto Pharaoh." He 
was then " fourscore and three years old." 
Eighty-three found John Wesley as cheer- 
ful, and working as hard as ever. He 
wrote the Life of Fletcher, and was engaged 
upon it from five in the morning till eight 
at night. " These," said he, " are my work- 
ing hours ; I cannot write longer in a day 



EIGHTY- THREE. 1 1 5 

without hurting my eyes." Speaking of 
Rowland Hill, the late Dr. Sprague, of 
Albany, says : " I attended, this evening, 
worship at Tottenham Court-Road Chapel, 
and found a thronged house, and the 
preacher seemed just as vigorous and fresh 
as if his faculties had not been tasked at 
all during the day. He told me that upon 
an average he preached about seven times 
a week, besides having much of his time 
taken up with public engagements, though 
he had then reached the age of eighty- 
three, and had been in the ministry sixty- 
four years." John Eliot, a contented and 
happy old man, was still preaching occa- 
sionally to his beloved Indians. 

What a contrast to these men presents 
itself in Talleyrand ! Possessed of great 
wealth, enjoying high honors, the com- 
panion and counsellor of kings, himself 
a prince, he wrote: "Behold, eighty-three 
years passed away ! What cares ! what 
agitations ! what anxieties ! what ill-will ! 
what sad complications ! and all without 



Il6 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

other result, except great fatigue of body 
and mind, a profound sentiment of dis- 
couragement for the future, and disgust 
of the past ! " And what a contrast there 
was between that gloomy Frenchman and 
Cornaro, the genial Italian, who says : 
" And now, in my eighty-third year, I 
enjoy a happy state both of body and 
mind. I can mount my horse without 
assistance ; I climb steep hills ; and I have 
lately written a play, abounding in inno- 
cent wit and humor." 

It is a source of no small gratification 
to lookers-on to witness such proofs of 
bodily vigor at this age. Roman soldiers 
were delighted when the Emperor Nerva 
made Virginius Rufus (A. D. 99) Consul, 
along with himself, for the third time. 
Izaak Walton appears to have been ready 
to start on a pilgrimage of one hundred 
miles, difficult and hazardous at that time 
— two hundred years ago — for a visit to 
his friend Cotton ; and no doubt to enjoy 
his favorite diversion of angling, for the 



EIGHTY-THREE. 1 1 7 

river Dove in that neighborhood offered 
great attractions. The prospect of such 
a visit called forth a beautiful poetic wel- 
come, in advance, from Cotton. Well on 
in his eighty-third year Sir Henry Holland 
wrote : " Except in the single instance of 
a severe surgical operation, which confined 
me for some weeks, I have never, in more 
than fifty years of practice, been prevented 
from attending to the maladies of others 
by my own illness." Charles W. Peale 
painted a full-length portrait of himself at 
the age of eighty-three, and Rembrandt had 
done the same. 

Mental faculties well preserved and 
well used at this period are specially to 
be noted. Isaac Newton published a new 
edition of his Principia ; Bishop Cumber- 
land began a successful study of the Coptic 
language ; and Lord Brougham began his 
autobiography. The lectures of Blumen- 
bach were crowded with students from all 
parts of Europe after he was eighty-three. 
The well-known Maynard, a member of the 



Il8 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

only Parliament of James II, though three 
years beyond fourscore, exhibited great 
strength and boldness. A bill was brought 
in to make words disparaging the King's 
person or government high treason, which 
it was supposed would have embraced any- 
thing spoken against the King's religion. 
"This," says Lord Campbell, " was chiefly 
opposed by Sergeant Maynard, who in a 
very grave speech laid open the inconven- 
ience of making words treason ; they were 
often ill heard and ill understood, and 
were apt to be misrecited by a very small 
variation ; men in a passion, or in drink, 
might say things they never intended ; 
therefore he hoped they would keep to 
the law of Edward III, by which an overt 
act was made the necessary proof of all 
intentions." 

" Children's children are the crown of 
old men, and the glory of children are 
their fathers." This saying of Solomon 
found a happy illustration in the case of 
Lord Eldon, when he was eighty-three. 



EIGHT} - THREE. I 1 9 

His grandson, Lord Encombe. with sev- 
eral other persons of distinction, was to 
receive the honorary degree of Doctor of 
Civil Law. In the Lives of the Chancellors 
the scene is thus described : " When it 
came to • his turn to be presented, there 
was great applause, and the looks of all 
were turned to Lord Eldon, whose eyes 
were fixed upon his grandson. Dr. Phil- 
limore, as Law Professor, taking Lord 
Encombe by the hand, presented him to 
the Chancellor and Convocation with these 
words : ' Insignissime Cancellarie, vosque 
egregii Procuratores, praesento vobis prae- 
nobilem virum, Johannem Scott, Vice-Co- 
mitem Encombe, e Collegio Novo, Artium 
Maeistrum, et Honoratissimi Comitis de 
Eldon/ This name had scarcely passed 
the Professor's lips when there arose a 
universal shout of loud and enthusiastic 
cheering. Lord Eldon had stood up when 
his grandson approached, but was quite 
overcome bv this burst of kind feeling 
toward himself and his family. Leaning 



120 OUR BIRTHDAYS, 

his arm on the cushion of his desk, he 
covered his face. When the first applause 
had subsided, the Professor resumed — 
' Comitis de Eldon' — but a second burst 
drowned his voice for several minutes 
longer. Dr. Phillimore found that it would 
be quite impossible to get on if he 
mentioned this name again ; so when si- 
lence was obtained he continued, 'juven- 
cum Nepotem, ut admittatur ad gradum 
Doctoris in Jure Civili honoris causa.' The 
Duke of Wellington, as Chancellor, rising, 
and taking off his cap according to the 
usage, pronounced the formal admission ; 
' Vir honoratissime, ego, auctoritate mea et 
totius Universitatis, admitto te ad gradum 
Doctoris in Jure Civili, honoris causa.' 
Upon which Lord Encombe, advancing, 
ascended the steps of the Chancellor's 
chair to receive his hand. The cordiality 
of the Duke's manner in welcoming his 
young friend drew fresh cheers from the 
assembly, and when Lord Encombe, in- 
stead of proceeding at once to his place 



EIGHT \ - THREE. 1 2 1 

among the Doctors, turned aside, and 
taking Lord Eldon's hand bowed himself 
respectfully and affectionately upon it, the 
expressions of sympathy with the young 
nobleman were repeated by the spectators 
more warmly still. The aged Earl, after 
gazing on his grandson for some moments 
with overflowing eyes, again sank his head 
upon the desk before him, amid continu- 
ing peals of applause, and covered his 
face with his hands from the view of the 
enthusiastic multitude." 

The joy and crown of many a home 
is an aged mother or grandmother. Mrs. 
Gage gives us the portrait : 

Is she not beautiful, 
Graceful, and fair, 
In her arm-chair, 
So cheerful and dutiful; 
Sitting, sitting 
Knitting, knitting 
With ivory needles her strips so long, 
Woven together with chat and song, 
Her rainbow matting to lay on the floor 
For the feet she loves, bv the chair or door ? 



122 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Sitting, sitting 
Knitting, knitting, 
Never a murmur from day to day, 
Happily passing her life away. 
As blessed as a child in its sportive glee 
Is our dear mother at eighty-three. 

We call her beautiful, 
As she sits there 
In her arm-chair, 
Her snow-white cap o'er her snow-white hair ; 
Her kerchief, pure as a lily's crest, 
Smoothly folded upon her breast, 
Smooth and clear as her life at rest ; 
Her robe and shawl, of a twilight gray, 
Falling in softened folds away 
From her busy hands, as she is sitting 
Busily reading or busily knitting, 

From morn till night, 

Cloudy or bright ; 
Ever contented and blest is she, 
Our dear mother at eighty-three. 

O maidens fair ! with shining hair, 
And cheeks and lips like strawberry tips, 
With springing feet that upward still 
Essay to gain life's summit hill; 
Oh ! think, before you reach the height, 
To gather jewels by the way, 
As now you may 
On left and right ; 



EIGHT \ - THREE. 1 2 < 

For strewn beside your path the)' lay — 
The pearls of faith forever pure, 
Diamonds of hope forever bright, 
And charity's sweet gems of light, 

That will endure ; 
And weave a crown so beautiful, 
Filled in with loves so dutiful. 
That when you come to totter down 
'The other side," your lives may be 
A benediction, as to me 
Is our blest mother's at eighty-three. 



EIGHTY-FOUR. 



Old — we are growing old: 
Going on through a beautiful road. 
Finding earth a more blessed abode ; 
Nobler work by our hands to be wrought, 
Freer paths for our hope and our thought : 
Because of the beauty the years unfold, 

We are cheerfully growing old. 

Old — we are growing old: 
Going up where the sunshine is clear; 
Watching grander horizons appear 
Out of clouds that enveloped our youth ; 
Standing firm on the mountains of truth : 
Because of the glory the years unfold, 

We are joyfully growing old. 

— Lucy Larco7n. 

Many happy returns of the clay ! — an 
appropriate wish, my friend. This anniver- 
sary makes not a few around you happy, 
for they see that you are happy, that you 
have many comforts, and that many bright 
hopes are entertained. You have not 
pitched your tent on the north side, but 
only on the sunny side of the hill, and 



126 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

nobody likens your white locks to the 
snows of winter. You remind us of Jeremy 
Bentham, the celebrated utilitarian philos- 
opher, who retained his serenity and fresh- 
ness remarkably, looking at this age no 
older than most men at sixty. We cannot 
imagine that the patriarch Jacob was a 
man of many wrinkles at eighty-four, when 
he married ; nor Joshua when, as some 
compute, he took command of the host of 
Israel; nor Andrea Doria, who secured the 
greater part of Corsica for the Genoese, 
and received the title of Liberator and 
Father of his country; nor Enrico Dandolo, 
when elected Doge of Venice (1204), then 
a leading power in Europe. He led an 
attack on Constantinople, and took the 
city. He was in command of the Vene- 
tians at the siege of Jerusalem, and was 
chosen sovereign of the capital of the East, 
an honor which the great man declined. 
During all these achievements he was 
blind ; yet his activity continued through 
life, which did not close till ninety-four. 



EIGHTY-FOUR. 1 2 7 

On his eighty-fourth birthday, Grant 
Thorburn addressed the following letter 
to the New York Observer, dated I 
Haven, Conn., February 18, 1857: "Men 
are fools, Mr. Printer, who are continu- 
ally grumbling about a miserable world. I 
have seen as many years as most men see 
in this world — this day I enter my eighty- 
fifth year — yet I am not tired of the world, 
1 and, if it so will Heaven/ I would live 
my life over again, with all its joys and 
sorrows. I think Jacob erred when he 
told Pharaoh that ' few and evil had been 
the days of his pilgrimage/ Many and 
good have been the days of my pilgrim- 
age. In my twenty-second year I left my 
father's house. Prior to this I had not 
been twenty miles from the cottage on 
the heather hills in Scotland where I was 
born. I landed in New York in 1794, not 
having a friend in the country to cow 
or direct. A kind Providence led me to 
the shop of an employer, who, with an 
only workman, remembered the Sabbath 



128 OUR BIRTHDAYS, 

day. Thus was I kept from the path of 
the destroyer. From 1795 till 1822, the 
yellow fever prevailed seventeen summers. 
I never left the city. I nursed among 
the sick. Yet neither myself, my wife, 
nor any of my ten children ever caught 
the prevailing disease. It is sixty-three 
years and six months since I first saw 
New York. In all that period I have 
only been ten days confined to the house 
by sickness. I have shared in the trials 
of life and vicissitudes of business, but 
never grieved for losses in trade. When 
a draft from the South for five hundred 
dollars came back protested, I rejoiced 
because it was not a thousand. If I 
bruised my arm, I thanked God it was 
not my neck. In times of trouble, if 
we look around, we will see millions in 
a worse condition than ourselves. There- 
fore we ought to be thankful. I never 
felt a rheumatic pain. I walk without a 
staff. I sleep without rocking, and eat my 
food without the help of brandy or bitters. 



EIGHT Y-FO UR. 1 29 

" Here, the Sabbath is remembered and 
kept holy. Except when an aged wor- 
shiper is carried to church, you never 
hear the sound of a rolling wheel. It re- 
minds me of the quiet Sabbaths I spent 
on the heather hills of Scotland eighty 
years ago. My eyes and ears fail, but 
this defect is greatly mitigated by borrow- 
ing the young eyes of my partner for life. 
She is an excellent reader, is ever at my 
side, soothing my path to the banks of 
Jordan — the noise of those waters is 
sounding in my ears. 

Yours, 

Grant Thorburn." 

Such diminished strength of eyesight, 
and other organs of sense, is, of course, 
not unusual at this time of life, and yet 
noteworthy exceptions are all the while 
occurring. Barocchio could paint, and 
Milton's father read without the aid of 
spectacles. Thomas Jefferson had not 
lost a tooth. 



130 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Mental activity, exhibited in literary 
and artistic industry, has sometimes been 
witnessed. Bellini's paintings showed no 
signs of feebleness. Dr. Alexander Nowell 
was elected Principal of Brasenose College, 
and for six years retained apparently the 
full vigor of his faculties. Thomas Hobbes 
composed, in Latin hexameter and pen- 
tameter verses, an amusing account of his 
own fortunes ; and Vondel, the most emi- 
nent poet of Holland, translated Ovid's 
Metamorphoses into Dutch verses. At the 
same age Benjamin Franklin composed 
his humorous rejoinder to the proslavery 
speech delivered in Congress by Jackson, 
of Georgia. Baron Bunsen wrote : " Herr 
von Raumer, who is chief of the ministe- 
rial section concerned with the affairs of 
Rome, and who in fact carries on the cor- 
respondence with me, is eighty-four years 
of age, and I had been prepared to find 
him pedantic ; but I was touched more 
than I can express by his childlike open- 
ness and kindness. I found that all I had 



EIGHTY-FO UR. ■ 1 3 1 

written was present to his mind, and you 
will believe that I was happy and thankful 
not to have labored in vain." 

Bodily vigor and literary activity at 
this period may sometimes be enjoyed in 
spite of most unpromising conditions at 
the outset of life. Neither Fontenelle nor 
Voltaire was expected to live at the time 
of birth. Each seemed to be dying ; vet 
the one lived to be almost a hundred, and 
the other to his eighty-fifth year ; and 
both of them retained their faculties re- 
markably. 

In Sir Henry Holland's Recollections of 
Past Life, he informs his readers that he 
went to press when already advanced in 
his eighty-fourth year ; that he excelled in 
horsemanship at eighty-four, and acknowl- 
edged his positive inability to walk slowly. 

Anciently this was regarded, you are 
aware, as one of the two grand climac- 
terics. In the age of man any multiple of 
the sacred number seven being supposed to 
be attended by some noteworthy change, 



132 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

there was believed to be a special liability 
when the period of seven times twelve 
arrived. This notion was, perhaps, of Chal- 
dean origin, and may well be relegated to 
the sphere of astrology. Vital statistics 
do not sustain the belief that any one 
year of life has universally, or even gen- 
erally, a special significance. Development, 
with its changes almost imperceptible, 
moves on regardless of definite dates. 
Such cases as I have referred to remind 
one of Cicero's ideal old man — a distin- 
guished Roman nobleman of high rank, 
eminent as a soldier, orator, or statesman, 
or all of these ; rich and prosperous, hav- 
ing a stern command over himself and 
over others, and at the age of eighty-four 
still in full vigor both of mind and body. 
No ancient classical writer would be 
likely to speak of superior aged women. 
Christianity had not yet changed the 
sentiment of the old world, which so 
widely failed to appreciate the gentler 
sex. Thanks that our mothers lived no 



EIGHTY-FO 1 7v\ I 3 3 

earlier in the history of the world, and 
that so many of them now live so long. 
Married, or unmarried, there are more 
octogenarian women than men. " Caroline 
Herschel," writes Mrs. Sara Coleridge, " is 
now eighty-four; her letters from Berlin, 
where she resides, are full of vigor and 
spirit. She says, ' My brother and I have 
sometimes stood out star-gazing till two 
o'clock, and have been told the next day 
that, the night before, our neighbor's pigs 
had died of the frost/" Many another 
has been equally active and useful, and 
entitled to a no less deep regard. Hannah 
More, after removing at this period to 
Clifton, was so attractive that her visitors 
in the course of three weeks were com- 
puted at four hundred. 

I love the aged ; every silver hair 

On their time-honored brow speaks to my heart 
In language of the past : each furrow there, 

In all my best affections claims a part: 
Next to our God and Scripture's holy page, 
Is deepest reverence due to virtuous age. 



134 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

So wrote Marguerite St. Leon Loud, 
and many a heart echoes the sentiment. 
In the sacred Scripture there is mention 
of this age in only one instance, that of 
Anna, who " was a widow of about four- 
score and four years ; " she " departed not 
from the temple, but served God with fast- 
ings and prayers night and day." What 
devout assiduity ! present not only at the 
stated hours of supplication by day, but 
at the night anthems occasionally chanted 
by priests in the temple. This venerable 
widow and prophetess gave thanks to the 
Lord, and " spake of him to all them 
that looked for redemption in Jerusalem." 
Next to the shepherds she was the first to 
announce the advent. Whatever the out- 
ward infirmities, her heart was young, and 
on her lips was the joyous news, Messiah 
has come ! I have seen the child Jesus 
in the arms of Simeon ! 



EIGHTY-FIVE. 



I hail once more my natal day, 
Still in my tenement of clay, 

With many favors blest ; 
And He who placed the structure here 
Can prop it up another year, 

If He should think it best. 

So wrote Mrs. Ormsby, of Fayette, Me., 

on the eighty-fifth anniversary of her birth, 
and she added six more stanzas in a 
hopeful, religious strain. 

Vital piety not only promotes longev- 
ity, but is an ornament of supreme beauty 
and grace on old age. Thrice entitled to 
congratulation is the man or woman who 
seasonably gives heart and life to the Au- 
thor and Preserver of life. Dr. Thomas 
Guthrie writes : vk I remember an eminent 
saint, Ladv Carnegie, savins:, k Let no one 
delay to old age seeking and making sure 



136 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

of an interest in Christ ; for I have now 
seen eighty-five years, and yet don't feel 
old.' ' How do earthly distinctions and ac- 
quisitions grow dim in the light of God's 
reconciled face, and the rays of heavenly 
glory! At the same time it was a de- 
served recognition of merit when the En^- 
lish Astronomical Society took unusual ac- 
tion, the first instance of the kind. The 
Council, " abandoning compliment on the 
one hand, and false delicacy on the other, 
submits that while the tests of astronomi- 
cal merit should in no case be applied to 
the works of a woman less severely than 
to those of a man, the sex of the for- 
mer should no longer be an obstacle to 
her receiving any acknowledgment which 
might be held due to the latter. And 
your Council, therefore, recommends this 
meeting to acid to the list of honorary 
members the names of Miss Caroline 
Herschel and Mrs. Somerville, of whose 
astronomical knowledge, and of the utility 
of the ends to which it has been applied, 



EIGHTY-FIVE. I 3 J 

it is not necessary to recount the proofs." 
The former of the two distinguished ladies 
was then eighty-five years of age. Honor 
to whom honor is due. General von 
Ziethen, a favorite of Frederick the Great, 
was a man of prayer as well as of brav- 
ery, and the infidel monarch could not 
help revering him. No incident in the 
life of Frederick makes a more pleasing 
impression than the way he received Gen- 
eral Ziethen, when eighty-five, at one of 
his military levees. It is given by Car- 
lyle. The old man went to the palace 
after the parade. " The parole was given 
out, the orders imparted to the generals, 
and the King had turned towards the 
princes of the blood, when he perceived 
Ziethen on the other side of the hall be- 
tween his son and his two aides-de-camp. 
Surprised in a very agreeable manner at 
this unexpected sight, he broke out into 
an exclamation of joy, and directly mak- 
ing up to him — k What, my good old 
Ziethen, are you there ! ' said his Majesty. 



138 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

' How sorry am I that you have had 
the trouble of walking up the staircase ! 
I should have called upon you myself. 
How have you been of late ? ' ' Sire,' an- 
swered Ziethen, ' my health is not amiss, 
my appetite is good; but my strength! 
my strength ! ' ' This account,' replied the 
King, 'makes me happy by halves only; 
but you must be tired; I shall have a 
chair for you.' (A thing unexampled in 
the annals of royalty!) A chair, on order 
to Ziethen's aides-de-camp, was quickly 
brought. Ziethen, however, declared that 
he was not at all fatigued ; the King 
maintained that he was. ' Sit down, good 
father (Mein lieber alter Papa Ziethen, 
setze Er sich doch) ! ' continued his Maj- 
esty ; ' I will have it so, otherwise I must 
instantly leave the room, for I cannot 
allow you to be incommoded under my 
own roof.' The old general obeyed, and 
Frederick the Great remained standing be- 
fore him, in the midst of a brilliant circle 
that had thronged round them. After 



EIGHT} -FIVE. 1 39 

asking him many questions respecting his 
hearing, his memory, and the general state 
of his health, he at length took leave of 
him in these words ; ' Adieu, my dear 
Ziethen; take care not to catch cold; 
nurse yourself well, and live as long as 
you can, that I may often have the pleas- 
ure of seeing you.' After having said 
this the King, instead of speaking to the 
other generals, and walking through the 
saloons as usual, retired abruptly, and 
shut himself up in his closet/' 

There is no dignity, regal or ecclesiasti- 
cal, but what may well pay its respects to 
this advanced age when found in the way 
of righteousness. Bishop Daniel Wilson 
speaks of calling on Dr. Rottler, the dis- 
tinguished German missionary at Madras, 

O J 

then well on towards eighty-five. He had 
been sixty years in India. ki So excellent," 
says the good bishop, " is his sight that 
he can read the smallest print without 
spectacles, and his hearing continues good. 
He was the intimate friend and brother of 



140 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Swartz — a fine, venerable, holy, disciple. 
He received his first religious impressions 
when seven years of age." An intense 
desire for usefulness, and that of a high 
order, characterized Rottler. His extreme 
length of life was owing in part to that. 
Voluntary idleness is a consuming cancer ; 
selfish living is premature dying. The hon- 
est and abiding purpose to make others 
better and happier quickens the circula- 
tion, helps all vital functions, and brings 
a healthful glow to the cheeks. Hence of 
many an aged man it may be said, Senes- 
cit, 11011 segiiescit, " He grows old, but not 
indolent." It was so with John Eliot, the 
Apostle of the Indians. Always temper- 
ate, industrious, calm, and hopeful, he could 
not be idle though feebleness had come 
upon him at this period. Noticing the 
neglect of families to give religious in- 
struction to their negro servants, he pro- 
posed that these should be sent to his 
house once a week for that purpose. His 
last labor of love, when no longer able 



EIGHTY-FIVE. 141 

to q;o out of doors, was to teach a blind 
boy portions of Scripture, by patient oral 
repetition. His was the happy habit of 
watching more eagerly for opportunities 
to benefit others than the miser watches 
for an increase of his treasures. " Busy 
people," so wrote Lord Eldon at the age 
of eighty-five, "are very apt to think a 
life of leisure is a life of happiness ; but 
believe me, for I speak from experience, 
when a man who has been very much 
occupied through life arrives at having 
nothing to do, he is very apt not to 
know what to do with himself." Camp- 
bell, in his Lives of tlic Chancellors, speaks 
of another nobleman, Lord Bathurst, as " a 
prodigy, for at eighty-five he has all the 
wit and promptitude of a man of thirty, 
a disposition to be pleased, and a power 
to please others beyond whatever I knew, 
added to which, a man of learning, cour- 
tesy, and feeling." 

You are reminded of the more striking 
case of Caleb, Joshua's associate explorer. 



142 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

And I fancy, my friend, you have read 
the fourteenth chapter of the Book of 
Joshua this morning. For the moment 
you feel like a twin brother of the son 
of Jephunneh. A glow of admiration kin- 
dles as you contemplate the erect, stal- 
wart form of that leading man in one of 
the tribes of Israel, the illustrious ex- 
plorer forty-five years before, who, with 
the only other faithful spy, brought back 
grapes of Eshcol, and pomegranates and 
figs ; and by recommending an immediate 
bold entrance into the land of promise 
came near being stoned to death for his 
fidelity. He now very justly claims He- 
bron and the neighboring hill country. 
He is confident that he can drive out 
the three sons of Anak, and regain that 
southern capital with the memorable cave 
of Machpelah. The old man made good 
his word, took the place, and drove out 
the three sons of Anak. 

A former President of the United States, 



EIGHT} -FIVE. 1 43 

John Adams, was at eighty-five a member 
of the convention appointed to revise the 
constitution of Massachusetts. Learned and 
literary activity is sometimes exhibited. 
Writing to Mr. George Ticknor, Alexan- 
der von Humboldt, then eighty-nine, said: 
" Bonpland, still much occupied with sci- 
entific labors, even cherishing the hope of 
visiting Europe again and of bringing in 
person back to Paris his rich and beau- 
tiful collections in botany and o-eoloow, is 
eighty-five years old, and enjoys greater 
strength than I do." Caspar Crayer, the 
Dutch painter, continued to work indus- 
triously in his art till his eighty-sixth 
year. Izaak Walton published a Life of 
Bishop Sanderson. Walter Savage Lanclor 
was one of the few men in a o-eneration 
who read Plato through in his own tongue; 
and when he had passed his eighty-fifth 
birthday he read the whole of Homer's 
Odyssey in the original Greek. The father 
of Isaac Watts was not wholly without the 



144 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

talent of versifying which so distinguished 
his son : 

Worn with the toils of fourscore years and five, 

A weary pilgrim, Lord, to thee I come ; 

To beg supporting grace, till I arrive 

At heaven, thy promised rest, my wished-for home. 



EIGHTY-SIX. 



Light dwell in thee, and thou 

Dwell ever in the light ; 
No wrinkle on thy brow, 

Thine eye still blue and bright. 

One long sweet spring be thine, 
With buds still bursting through, 

Fresh blossoms every hour, 
And verdure fair and new. 

— H. Bonar. 

Yes, blossoms and fruit in old age — 
that is more than a wish today ; it is a 
fact, and it puts special warmth into con- 
gratulations that, while fourscore and six 
years are behind you, this anniversary 
shows so much of freshness. Friends wit- 
ness both fragrance and the promise of 
further fruitage. The meridian has no mo- 
nopoly of attractions, for there are plants 
that grow more fragrant toward twilight. 



146 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

It is most gratifying to notice, my friend, 
that you neither seem vain of advanced 
age, nor are given to complaints about 
it. Your smiles today make many others 
smile, and we congratulate you on the 
power and the habit of helping to make 
so many in the neighborhood cheery. It 
is not rank nor wealth that gathers friends 
around you ; nor are they mere fair-weather 
or summer friends. You have never lost 
one, if I mistake not, except by death. 

No one should look upon himself as 
laid on the shelf so long as he is a power 
for good, even if it be only in a passive 
way. But decrepitude of body does not 
characterize you, and still less decrepitude 
of mind. You would not, to be sure, care 
to mount a charger and lead an army; 
but you recollect that Field Marshal Ra- 
detzky did it at your age, and gained a 
victory at Custozza (1848) which led to 
the Austrian reconquest of the whole of 
Lombardy, and for the time being dashed 
the hopes of Italian patriots. The poet 



EIGHTY-SIX. 147 

Rogers was singularly brisk ; he, however, 
met with an accident by which one of his 
legs was broken, though he still lived six 
years after that ; and Dr. Eliphalet Nott 
also lived full six years after resigning the 
presidency of Union College, which was 
not owing to absolute failure of bodily 
or mental powers. John Wesley found at 
eighty-six that he could preach only twice 
a day ; yet in the course of a journey 
somewhat less than two months in length, 
he preached about one hundred sermons 
in more than threescore towns and vil- 
lages, not less than a dozen times in the 
open air, and once in a place which he 
reports as "large but not elegant — a cow 
house." 

When the Prince of Orange first took 
up his quarters at Whitehall, in 16SS, vari- 
ous public bodies presented addresses of 
welcome to him. Sergeant Maynard came 
at the head of the gownsmen, and no one 
of the party seemed more lively than he. 
The Prince complimented him on his great 



148 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

age, and on his having outlived the law- 
yers of his time. " If your Highness had 
not come over to our aid," he replied, 
" I might have outlived the law itself." 
At eighty-six Simon Cameron was still 
doing vigorous service in the Senate of 
the United States. 

Visitors to the Church of San Sebas- 
tiano in Venice never fail to notice a pic- 
ture at the first altar. It is a Saint 
Nicholas, painted by Titian when close 
upon this period of life. Cornaro, the 
panegyrist of old age, wrote the second 
of his well-known treatises, or discourses, 
and testifies : " I now find myself sound 
and hearty at the age of eighty-six. My 
senses continue perfect, even my teeth, 
my voice, my memory, and my strength. 
What is more, the powers of my mind 
do not diminish as I advance in years, 
because as I grow older I lessen the quan- 
tity of my solid food. I greatly enjoy the 
beautiful expanse of this visible world, 
which is really beautiful to those who 



EIGHTY-SIX. 149 

know how to view it with a philosophic 
eye. 

These, with a single exception, appear 
to have inherited a vigorous constitution, 
and to have formed habits suited to pro- 
long life. That has been true of most 
men and women who rank among the 
octogenarians, but not of all. Cornaro, for 
instance, before he was forty had ruined 
his health, and it was only by the most 
careful and persistent observance of an 
abstemious diet, and other obvious require- 
ments, that he attained his unusual length 
of days. Similar cases might be men- 
tioned, as the poet Rogers ; also the late 
Earl Russell, who hardly knew a day of 
health till he was forty, and yet saw four- 
score and six. At last 

" Of no distemper, of no blast he died, 
But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long ; 
Even wondered at, because it falls no sooner. 
Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years : 
Yet freshly ran he on six winters more, 
Till like a clock worn out with beating time 
The wheels of weary life at last stood still." 



150 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

That name reminds us of his ancestors, 
Lord William Russell, and Lady Rachel, 
the noble, heroic, Christian widow of Lord 
William. She reached the same age as this 
distinguished descendant of hers. Nothing 
could exceed her affectionate and magnan- 
imous devotion to her husband, except 
the devout equanimity and resignation with 
which she bore one of the heaviest trials 
ever laid upon woman. Shortly before de- 
parture she wrote thus : " God has not 
denied me the support of his Holy Spirit 
in this my long day of calamity ; but en- 
abled me, in some measure, to rejoice in 
him as my portion forever. He has pro- 
vided a remedy for all our griefs by his 
sure promises of another life, where there 
is no death, nor any pain nor trouble, but 
fullness of joy in the presence of him who 
made us, and who will love us forever." 
Gaspar Kaplitz, a Bohemian nobleman, a 
martyr at eighty-six years of age — and hav- 
ing, but for wicked persecution, the pros- 
pect of continued life some time longer — 



EIGHTY-SIX. 151 

on reaching the place of execution said 
to the officer in charge : " Behold an un- 
worthy and ancient man, who has often 
entreated God to take me out of this 
wicked world, but could not till now ob- 
tain his for God reserved me till 
these years to be a spectacle to the world 
and a sacrifice to himself ; therefore God's 
will be done." Nothing but Holy Scripture 
and the example and grace of the Son of 
God can form such a character, or fur- 
nish such a testimony. Antistes Hess, at 
the age of fourscore and six, informed a 
young missionary of the Society for pro- 
moting Christianity among the Jews, that 
for seventy years the Word of God had 
been the daily object of his study, and 
that he was still discovering in it new 
traces of the mysterious love and wisdom 
of God. " Happy is the man that findeth 
-dom!" " Length of days is in her right 
hand.'' 



EIGHTY-SEVEN. 



" I am not old, though years have cast 
Their shadows on my way ; 
I am not old, though youth has passed 
On rapid wings away ; 

" For in my heart a fountain flows, 
And round it pleasant thoughts repose ; 
And sympathies and feelings high 
Spring up like stars on evening sky." 

Very true; and very glad are we. The 
heart is the seat of vita vere vitalis. There 
is the gauge of character, and when that 
is the abode of increasing good will to 
men, one is not growing old, but stay- 
ing youthful. Stinginess shortens life. It 
ossifies the heart. True, now and then 
a miser gets on into years, but he can- 
not be said to live, to live to any good 
purpose ; he is only on hand as a calcula- 



154 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

ting machine. The German poet, Burger, 
gives the result of a post-mortem exami- 
nation : 

Harpax, the merchant, died ; his body was dissected ; 
No symptom of disease was anywhere detected 
Until they reached the heart, which to find they were 

not able, 
But in its place they found the multiplication table. 

You have not been in the habit of 
giving only when importuned, but have 
regarded yourself as one of heaven's trus- 
tees, and so have dispensed as occasion 
suggested and means allowed. John Wes- 
ley did not increase his expenses of liv- 
ing, but only his charities, when income 
increased. He gave so generously that 
the tax^atherers thought he must be a 
wealthy man, and called on him for an 
inventory of his plate, and were informed 
that he had two silver spoons, one in 
London and one in Bristol. Eighty-seven 
years were something more than rounded 
out by him. Selina, the Countess of Hunt- 
ingdon, was well on beyond fourscore when 



EIGHT Y-SE VEN. I 5 5 

her charities ceased with her life. In the 
course of her last forty years she gave 
away at least five hundred thousand dol- 
lars. She sold her jewels to find means 
for building Brighton Chapel. 

I have heard you remark that the 
mind, like the body, needs tonics, and 
that nothing braces up the latter, and 
thus indirectly the former, like doing good 
to others. The hypochondriac is never 
long-lived, nor is he a genuinely benevo- 
lent man. Was there a happier person in 
Boston than Mr. Samuel Appleton, who 
died in 1853, and whose charitable dona- 
tions year after year exceeded twenty 
thousand dollars ? Perhaps not, unless 
some poor widow who cast in two mites, 
her whole living. Was there a man in 
Europe who enjoyed less than the elder 
Rothschild after he became a millionaire? 
" You must be a happy man, Mr. Roth- 
schild," said a gentleman who was enjoy- 
ing the hospitality of the banker's sump- 
tuous home. " Happy — me happy! "was 



156 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

the reply. " What ! happy, when just as 
you are going to dine you have a let- 
ter placed in your hands saying, ' If you 
do not send me five hundred pounds I 
will blow your brains out?' Happy — me 
happy ! " 

Sir Moses Montefiore attained his 
eighty-eighth year in 1872, and the year 
was signalized by a long and somewhat 
dangerous journey. He was the bearer 
of an address of congratulation from the 
Board of Deputies to Alexander II on the 
two hundredth anniversary of the birth of 
Peter the Great ; and the philanthropic Sir 
Moses was a happy man. If the trees in 
our orchards were not regularly relieved 
of their fruit, they would be short-lived. 

Hand and mind may retain a gratify- 
ing steadiness and vigor at fourscore and 
seven. The creative genius of Michael 
Angelo could not be content with inac- 
tivity. Titian had lost no confidence in 
his own powers of conception and exe- 
cution, and his patrons experienced no 



EIGHT Y-SE VEN. 1 5 7 

misgivings concerning either particular ; 
Hobbes had a translation of the Iliad 
ready for the press. Izaak Walton pub- 
lished two letters on the Distempers of 
the Times ; and Lord Brougham still made 
speeches. " Humboldt was much changed," 
wrote Mr. George Ticknor, " as might be an- 
ticipated ; for the difference between sixty- 
seven and eighty-seven is always much 
greater than between forty-seven and sixty- 
seven, these being respectively the inter- 
vals of my acquaintance with him. But 
his faculties seem as active, and his pur- 
suit of knowledge as eager as ever, while 
at the same time his benevolence seems 
to grow with his years." Dr. Nott, then 
ex-President of Union College, gave lec- 
tures on " Karnes' Elements " to a class of 
young ladies, greatly to their delight and 
profit. Antonio Grimani was eighty-seven 
when he assumed the sovereign office of 
Doge of Venice. 

Dr. Benjamin Lord preached his sixty- 
fourth anniversary sermon as pastor of 



158 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

the church in Norwich, Conn. (1781), but 
at this age, eighty-seven, lost his eyesight, 
though he still continued to write sermons 
after a fashion ; and having heard them 
read repeatedly by a granddaughter, could 
deliver them without much embarrassment. 
Some of these were regarded by the peo- 
ple as among the best he ever preached. 
Rev. John Ward, the first minister of 
Haverhill, Mass., preached an excellent 
sermon only a month before his decease. 
It is, of course, not strange that life itself 
as well as all activity should come to a 
close at fourscore and seven. Sometimes 
that takes place without the perceptible 
invasion of disease. Mrs. Sarah Savage, a 
sister of Matthew Henry, the commentator, 

— a lady eminent for her piety and good 
sense, uniformly meek, charitable, faithful, 
and carrying much of heaven in her heart 

— with no previous illness, gently breathed 
her last. I have a peculiarly pleasing 
recollection of Dr. Timothy M. Cooley, of 



EIGHTY-SE VEN. I 5 9 

Granville, Mass., where for more than sixty 
years he was pastor of the same church. 
His leaving the world was like his man- 
ner of life, so placid and full of peace 
that no one could weep. Such a sunset 
is the harbinger of unnumbered glories 
beyond. 



EIGHTY-EIGHT. 



Thfs day my years are eighty-eight — 

An unexpected age; 
Lord, give me patience now to wait 

My weary pilgrimage. 

Oh, guide me down the steep of age 

And keep my passions cool, 
To understand the sacred page 

And practice every rule. 

These, with additional lines, appeared 
in the Tract Journal a few years since. 
The chief point of interest about them 
is that they were written by a lady on 
her eighty-eighth birthday. Poetic warmth 
and grace, or other literary excellence, are 
not indeed to be looked for at fourscore 
and eight ; but we do often observe the 
opposite of mental torpor. That remark- 
able woman, Mrs. Mary Somerville, pub- 
lished her latest work ; it treated of mo- 



1 62 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

lecular science ; and Lord Lyndhurst, a 
son of Copley the painter, and born in 
Boston, Mass., made a long and eloquent 
address on British relations with the Con- 
tinent, and urged upon the House of 
Lords the increase of national defenses. 
It is not a great while since you relin- 
quished the saddle. Masanissa, the Car- 
thaginian, at eighty-eight not only com- 
manded his army in the war with Has- 
drubal, but was able to go through all 
the military exercises with agility. 

There are two women, of whom you 
will be likely to think in contrast. One 
is Christobella, Viscountess Saye and Sele, 
of the last century, who at this age was 
singularly vivacious and extravagantly de- 
voted to dancing. Her " light fantastic 
toe " figured in fashionable minuets in her 
own ballroom at Doddershall : 

"Around and around and around they go, 
Heel to heel and toe to toe, 
Prance and caper, curvet and wheel, 
Toe to toe and heel to heel." 



EIGHTY-EIGHT. 1 63 

The other is a woman of the present 
century, some account of whom appeared 
a while since : " I went the other day," 
says the writer, " to see a very old lady. 
She was eighty-eight years old. She lived 
in a small room all by herself, and had a 
small fire and small kettles, and a small 
pantry, and a little round table, and a 
little teapot. Everything was on a small 
scale, to suit her small strength and her 
small means. She was very glad to see 
us. ' Are you not lonely sometimes ? ' I 
asked. ' Oh, no,' she answered in a cheer- 
ful tone; 'the Lord Jesus is always with 
me, and he is the best society, you know.' 
We inquired about her nights ; did she 
sleep well ? ' Yes,' she said ; but she rose 
at five o'clock, or thereabouts. We ex- 
pressed our surprise. * Well, my Saviour, 
you know, arose a great while before day 
to pray, and I find it so sweet to follow 
his example ; and when the moon shines, 
and I don't have to light a light, I have 
such beautiful times ; ' and her aged face 



1 64 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

shone, I thought, something as Moses' did 
when he came down from talking with 
God on the mount. She bustled about 
and showed us her old Bible and the 
quilts she made seventy years ago, and 
related in a lively style the way things 
used to be in her day. ' I suppose you 
think a great deal of those old times,' we 
said. ' Yes,' she answered. ' Yes ; but I 
think a great deal more of those good 
times to come.' " 

Two other women, whose earthly careers 
closed at eighty-eight, may be placed side 
by side, though there is not such dissim- 
ilarity between them — the one, Miss Eliza- 
beth Carter, distinguished for her classical 
attainments, a lady whom Bishop Butler, 
Archbishop Seeker, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
and Edmund Burke recognized as a friend, 
and whom Johnson praised highly — an 
unusual thing with him — for her Greek 
scholarship ; the other, her contemporary, 
Madame D'Arblay, also distinguished as 
a writer, and who kept a gossipy diary 



EIGHTY-EIGHT. 165 

for over seventy-two years. The life of 
Mrs. Grace Bennet synchronized in part 
with theirs, and the entire length was 
the same. Her dying testimony was given 
with much emphasis : " I here declare it 
before you that I have looked on the 
right hand and on the left; I have cast 
my eyes before and behind to see if 
there was any possible way of salvation 
but by the Son of God, and I am fully 
satisfied there is not ; no, none on earth, 
nor all the angels in heaven could have 
wrought out salvation for such a sinner. 
None but the Son of God himself, tak- 
ing our nature upon him, and doing all 
that the holy law required, could have 
procured pardon for me, a sinner. He 
has wrought out salvation for me, and 
I know that I shall enjoy it forever." 
She was the widow of a faithful minis- 
ter of the gospel. Not a few men in 
the sacred office have been summoned 
to their rest at eighty-eight. Such were 
Bishop White, of Pennsylvania, after a min- 



1 66 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

istry of sixty-four years ; and the Mora- 
vian missionary bishop, Spangenberg. The 
father of John Foster requested that the 
following inscription might be placed on 
his tombstone : " John Foster exchanged 
this life for a better, March 21, 18 14, in 
the eighty-eighth year of his age, and the 
sixty-third year after God had fully as- 
sured him that he was one of his sons." 
His son, the distinguished essayist, re- 
marks : " Before an advanced period of 
old age, it w T as, at the beginning of each 
new year, his earnest desire, as far as 
compatible with submission to the divine 
will, that it might be his last ; so that I 
have no doubt that he entered on twenty 
successive years with this desire expressed 
in prayer." Is that, after all, a desire 
wholly to be justified? Does not a slightly 
morbid element enter into it ? You will 
agree with me that it is as appropriate 
for us to be resigned to live as resigned 
to die. Nothing could be less justifiable 
than the pettishness of Jonah after his 



EIGHTY-EIGHT. 1 67 

gourd had withered — "I do well to be 
angry even unto death" — except the im- 
precation of Job, " Let the day perish 
wherein I was born." John Wesley fur- 
nishes a rare instance of cheerfulness to 
the end, and of untiring effort, also, till 
within a week of his sunset at four- 
score and eight. He had been a tireless 
preacher sixty-five years. For half a cen- 
tury he traveled about four thousand five 
hundred miles upon an average every year, 
and chiefly on horseback. Much of the 
time he delivered two sermons a day, and 
not unfrequently three or four. He never 
grew tired of praise, and his swan-song was: 

"I'll praise my Maker while I've breath; 
And when my voice is lost in death 

Praise shall employ my nobler powers ; 
My days of praise shall ne'er be past 
While life and thought and being last, 

Or immortality endures." 

A more unique birthday token was 
never presented than a biography written 
in Hebrew, and issued from the Berlin 



1 68 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

press. The author was a Russian Israel- 
ite, eminent for his mathematical knowl- 
edge and for the invention of a calcula- 
ting machine. The full title of the work 
reads: Alexander von Humboldt; a bio- 
graphical sketch dedicated to the Nestor of 
Wisdom 011 his Eighty-eighth Birthday, by 
S. Slominsky. I will only add that the 
token most satisfactory to friends, which 
they would like to place in your hands 
today, would be a biography of yourself, 
with an appendix containing all their good 
wishes. 



EIGHTY-XIXE. 



Oh. be thou blessed with all that heaven can send. 
Long health, long youth, long pleasure, and a friei 

— Alexandi 

A friend you certainly have — one who 
brings warm greetings today. There 
grateful remembrance of your compara- 
tively good health and youthfulness. These 
have been and are quite beyond the aver- 
age of those who reach this period of life. 
But you share in something superior to 
mere pleasure, which depends largely upon 
bodily organization, appetite, and mere 
animal activity. You have happiness in 
o'ood measure, something which distin- 
guishes life from simple existence ; life in 
the higher sense, something independent 
of outward circumstances. Your friends 
are deeply gratified with seeing this re- 
newed proof that what I s eak of may 



I/O OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

be had on earth, though not from earth. 
Its source is not natural but supernatural; 
I need not say to you that it comes from 
being at one with God. The Bible bene- 
dictions are not pronounced in view of 
exterior conditions. Even great sufferers 
are not the most unhappy of mortals. 
You recollect what Rousseau says : " Fre- 
quently, when in possession of everything 
that could make life pleasing, I have been 
the most miserable of mortals." It was 
not to be expected that he would live to 
great age. You call to mind, also, the 
venerable Countess of Huntingdon in her 
uniform life, and particularly one morn- 
ing when she took her easy-chair, a pe- 
culiar radiance on her face. " The Lord 
hath been present with my spirit, this 
morning, in a remarkable manner," she 
observed. " What he means to convey to 
my mind, I know not ; it may be my 
approaching departure. My soul is filled 
with glory ; I am as in the element of 
heaven itself," Rank and wealth and pleas- 



EIGHTY-NINE. 1 7 1 

ing environment had nothing to do with 
that enjoyment. A chimney sweep was 
once heard singing at his sooty work : 

"The sorrows of the mind 

Be banished from this place ; 
Religion never was designed 
To make our pleasures less." 

Genuine piety can carry sunshine into 
the darkest place. Your experience goes 
to show that spiritual joy never comes 
when directly sought, but springs up un- 
looked for in the midst of devout medi- 
tations, holy purposes, and active benevo- 
lence. It is a fountain fed by supplies 
from beyond the clouds. The Right Hon- 
orable Lady Vere reached this age, and it 
was at a period — the seventeenth century 
— when such instances of decided Christian 
character were seldom met with in hi<jh 
life. The presence of strangers in her 
house never interrupted family worship, 
morning or evening; and it was her prac- 
tice to pray with her maid-servants every 
night before retiring to rest. Miss Joanna 



172 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Baillie's eighty-nine years measured a ca- 
reer singularly happy. No author ever en- 
joyed an esteem deeper or more sincere 
among contemporaries. She seemed to re- 
tain the full possession of her faculties. 

Probably no teacher ever trained so many 
men eminent in Church and State, or had 
a more gratifying reputation, than Dr. 
Richard Busby, Master of the Westminster 
School, over which he presided with great 
skill and diligence for fifty-five years. 
Eighty-nine was the limit of his life. But 
Castanos, though approaching his nineti- 
eth year, was appointed tutor to Queen 
Isabel. With no small gratification Mrs. 
Robert Williams, of Moor Park, England, 
who lived to be over a hundred, held her 
great granddaughter in her arms at the 
font; and ex-President John Adams saw 
his son, John Quincy Adams, elevated to 
the same high office which he had filled 
a quarter of a century before. Lord Lynd- 
hurst made his last speech in Parliament, 
which was brilliant and effective. 



EIGHTY-NINE. 1 7 3 

Alexander von Humboldt wrote : " My 
physical strength declines, but declines 
slowly. My steps are more uncertain in 
their direction, owing to a feebleness (a 
relaxing) of the ligaments of the knee ; 
but I can remain standing for an hour 
without being fatigued. I continue to work, 
chiefly at night, being unrelentingly perse- 
cuted by my correspondence, which in- 
creases the more as one becomes an ob- 
ject of curiosity." " I am never really ill, 
but often incommoded, as is to be ex- 
pected at the age of eighty-nine." Walter 
Savage Landor wrote, in vigorous English, 
some of his Imaginary Conversations after 
his eighty-ninth anniversary. 

Perhaps more ministers have reached 
eighty-nine than men in any other call- 
ing. One of them was Dr. Joseph Lathrop, 
of West Springfield, Mass., a man emi- 
nent for candor, charity, and a blameless 
life. Dr. W. B. Sprague, his colleague, 
writes : " The day preceding the eighty- 
ninth anniversary of his birth he adverted 



174 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

to the wonderful goodness of God, which 
the review of his life had brought before 
him, and burst into a flood of tears. ' I have 
endeavored/ he said, ' to exercise some de- 
gree of gratitude for the blessings of the 
past year ; but I have not yet asked God 
to add to my life another year, and I 
have not determined that it is my duty 
to make such a request.' ' His pastorate 
covered sixty-four years. Another was Dr. 
Nathan Perkins, of West Hartford, Conn., 
who preached ten thousand sermons, and 
assisted more than one hundred and fifty 
young men in preparation for college. 

Concerning the author of one of our 
favorite hymns, John Wesley makes the 
following record in 1783 : " January 10. — I 
paid one more visit to Mr. Perronet, now 
in his ninetieth year. I do not know so 
venerable a man. His understanding is 
little if any impaired, and his heart seems 
to be all love. A little longer, I hope, he 
will remain here, to be a blessing to all 
that see and hear him." This will not 



EIGHTY-NINE. 1 7 5 

diminish appreciation of the lyric which 
you often sing : 

"All hail the power of Jesus' name." 

Yet another was the celebrated Row- 
land Hill, of London, whose labors con- 
tinued sixty-six years, and who is estimated 
to have preached at least twenty-three 
thousand sermons. Shortly before depar- 
ture he said : " I can see more of the 
Saviours glory than of my interest in 
him. God is letting me down gently into 
the grave, and I shall creep into heaven 
through a crevice of the door." When 
the last in the series of prophetic visions 
presented itself to Daniel, he was at the 
same age as you are now. May the same 
benediction and promise come to you as 
to him : " For thou shalt rest, and stand 
in thy lot at the end of the days." 



NINETY. 



" But why, you ask me, should this tale be told 
To men grown old, or who are growing old? 
It is too late! — Ah, nothing is too late, 
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. 
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles 
Wrote his grand CEdipus, and Simonides 
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, 
When each had numbered more than fourscore 

years ; 
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, 
Had but begun his Characters of Men." 

There is some little doubt as to the 
exact year when Theophrastus — Aristotle's 
heir and successor, who is said to have had 
two thousand pupils — wrote his work en- 
titled Characters, Some make him to have 
been even more than fourscore and ten at 
that time. There is, however, no doubt, 
my friend, as to your present anniversary, 
nor concerning the freshness of your fac- 
ulties. I give you joy at this advanced 



178 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

anniversary ! Your days of hurry are over 
— -thanks for that! You have no very har- 
assing cares. All needed assiduities are 
at hand. Your eyesight is unusually well 
preserved ; but if keener than it has ever 
been in the past, you would not be able 
to see how many sands remain in the 
glass. 

I apprehend that aged people are not 
generally aware of their value to a com- 
munity. A hoary head, found in the way 
of righteousness, serves to fortify the sen- 
timent of reverence, which is all too weak 
among us. The simple fact of continuing 
on earth for nine decades is an impres- 
sive one, especially considering that, as is 
estimated, of every three hundred children 
born, only one lives to be ninety. But to 
live long and to be old are not exactly 
the same thing. It is not a question of 
years, so much as of condition. The pres- 
ence of a truly venerable person of ninety 
is a silent sermon, an expenseless public 
good. We resent the stigmatizing of such 



NINETY. 179 

an unsalaried preacher as past the " dead 
line." Mrs. Sarah J. Hale wrote, at four- 
score and ten : 

Growing old ! growing old ! Do they say it of me ? 

Do they hint my fine fancies are faded and fled ? 
That my garden of life, like the winter-swept tree, 

Is frozen and dying, or fallen and dead? 

Is the Heart growing old, when each beautiful thing, 
Like a landscape at eve, looks more tenderly bright ; 

And love sweeter seems, as the bird's wand'ring wing 
Draws nearer her nest at the coming of night ? 

Is the Mind growing old, when, with ardor of youth, 
Through the flower walks of Wisdom new paths it 
would try, 
And seek, not for shells from the ocean of Truth, 
But the Pearl of great price, which the world cannot 
buy? 

Is the Soul growing old ? See the planet of even, 
Which, rising at morn, melts in glory above ! 

Thus, turning from earth, we creep closer to heaven, 
Like a child to her father's warm welcoming love. 

And then what a rich benediction to 
the immediate family circle is the pres- 
ence of a beloved nonagenarian ! Two 
mothers of men eminent in the literary 



180 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

ranks of England during the last century 
attained to this age ; and nothing in the 
biography of either is so touching as the 
proof of filial affection. Alexander Pope, 
in the Prologue to his Satires, gives this 
picture : 

Me let the tender office long engage, 

To rock the cradle of reposing age ; 

With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, 

Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death, 

Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, 

And keep a while one parent from the sky. 

Dr. Samuel Johnson, himself at fifty, 
wrote often to his mother. In his last 
letter to her he says : " You have been 
the best mother, and I believe the best 
woman in the world. I thank you for 
your indulgence to me, and beg forgive- 
ness of all that I have done ill, and of 
all that I have omitted to do well." The 
date was January 20, 1759; and it proved 
to be the day of her departure. Cassandra 
Fedele, of a noble family, born at Venice 
in 1465, was, by her father's desire, in- 



NINETY. 181 

structed in Greek, Latin, philosophy, and 
music, and with such success that, even 
in girlhood, she became the admiration of 
learned men of the age. She was elected, 
when ninety years old, the superior of a 
religious house in Venice. 

It is not a very frequent opportunity 
that one has to congratulate a friend on 
completing ninety years ; and still more 
rare to have so much occasion for doinor 
it as there is today. The Chinese, who 
have a specific name for different years 
of life, call ninety " Delayed." In your 
case, however, so free comparatively from 
infirmities, and blessed with so many com- 
forts, "Continued" would be more appro- 
priate. You are in notable company. Miss 
Caroline Herschel, sister of one and aunt 
of another distinguished astronomer, and 
celebrated herself for the discovery of 
heavenly bodies, wrote sprightly letter 
this time, and lived on till ninety-eieht ; 
while Mrs. Mary Somerville, who lead- the 
entire file of eminent female mathemati- 



1 82 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

cians, took up at ninety one department of 
higher mathematics, that she might the bet- 
ter understand Professor Pierce's profound 
memoir in linear and associative algebra. 
She devoted a few hours every morning 
with great zest to Serret's Cours eT Algebre 
Siiperieure, Salmon's Higher Algebra, and 
Tait on Quaternions. " I thank God," she 
remarks, " that my intellect is still unim- 
paired ! " 

You recall the incident reputed to have 
occurred at Frederick, Md., during our late 
war, when the stars and stripes waved in 
the face of rebel soldiers ; for 

" Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, 
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten." 

Neither your patriotism, nor your de- 
sire for personal activity in usefulness, gives 
tokens of decline, any more than was the 
case with Michael Angelo at this age. He 
pictured an old man in a child's go-cart, 
with an hour-glass on it, and the inscrip- 
tion, Ancora Imparo! " Yet I am learning." 



NINETY. 183 

Old age sometimes fosters courage ; nor 
does it always diminish a martial spirit. 
Joshua must have been ninety, or not far 
therefrom, when he broke up the confed- 
eracy of Northern kings by his signal vic- 
tory near the waters of Merom ; and in our 
day the Austrian Field Marshal Racletzky, 
at ninety, was still full of fire, rose at 
four in the morning, and continued busy 
all day. Physicians told him he must 
no longer mount a horse, and thereupon, 
with tears, he sent in his resignation, say- 
ing he was not fit to command troops, at 
the head of whom he could not march. 
But the Emperor would not accept the 
resignation; and consenting to continue in 
office, he had a small carriage made, in 
which he was able to review the troops 
to his mind. I have no doubt that you 
could now do what Bernhard Adam Grube, 
a Moravian, did on his ninetieth birthday 
— walk from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Penn., 
a distance of ten miles. Arndt, a well- 
known German poet, wrote, January, i860: 



1 84 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

" By God's mercy, at ninety years of age 
I am still so well that I can do my three 
or four miles over hill and dale quite 
briskly ; " but as those were German miles, 
the distance would be considerably over 
ten or twelve of ours. " It seemed," says 
his biographer, " as if all Germany wished 
to celebrate his ninetieth birthday. Princes 
and burghers, students and soldiers, the 
rector of the University, the commandant 
of the town, came to bring gifts and con- 
gratulations. The Prince Regent of Prus- 
sia sent him the order of the Red Eagle 
of the second class. The people of Berlin 
presented him with a fine marble bust 
of his ' invincible knight,' Stein. Cologne 
gave him the freedom of the city. The 
burghers of Kahla sent him a barrel of 
beer. Music and song- resounded round 
the house by night and by day. Letters 
and good wishes poured in from all sides." 
Seldom have such tokens of regard been 
showered upon any one as upon the 
venerable Von Moltke when his ninetieth 



NINETY. 185 

birthday arrived (1890), and few men of 
military genius and science have so well 
deserved such testimonials. He was mod- 
est, patient, intrepid — a perfect master of 
military tactics, who never lost a battle 
nor committed a blunder in a campaign. 
Among the many gifts received by him 
was a marshal's silver baton, embellished 
with imperial eagles and set with dia- 
monds, from the Emperor William. The 
corresponding anniversary of Peter Cooper's 
birth was celebrated (1881) at Cooper In- 
stitute, on which occasion he asked the 
Trustees of Cooper Union to accept his 
check for ten thousand dollars. He also 
presented to them his check for thirty 
thousand dollars, together with receipts in 
full for seventy thousand dollars which he 
expended the year before on the building. 
The clerical profession presents a good 
many nonagenarians. Of the four hun- 
dred and seventeen clergymen mentioned 
in Allen's American Biographical Diction- 
ary, thirteen lived to be over ninety. The 



1 86 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Rev. Dr. Ezra Ripley, of Concord, Mass., 
preached for the last time on his nine- 
tieth birthday, May i, 1841. It was, I sup- 
pose, with him in mind that Mr. Hawthorne 
wrote : " Can man be so ao-e-stricken that 
no faintest sunshine of his youth may 
revisit him once a year ? It is impos- 
sible. The moss on our time-worn man- 
sion brightens into beauty ; the good old 
pastor who once dwelt here renewed his 
prime, and regained his boyhood, in the 
genial breezes of his ninetieth spring. 
Alas for the worn and weary soul, if, 
whether in youth or age, it has outlived 
its privilege of springtime sprightliness ! " 
After Dr. Nathaniel Emmons retired from 
the active duties of his office, he spent 
much time in reading ; and at the age 
of ninety, when his memory had failed 
a good deal, his criticisms on different 
authors were as just, and his remarks on 
passing events as striking, as when he was 
at the zenith of intellectual activity. Con- 
versations 071 the Bible, by Dr. Enoch Pond, 



NINETY. 187 

appeared when he was close upon ninety, 
and was, as he said, the child of his old 
age. Such men do not find that an ap- 
proach to the western horizon is a going 
into clouds. The sun's calm radiance does 
not grow less. 

On the ninetieth birthday of the late 
Josiah Parsons Cooke, lines were addressed 
to him, the last stanza of which I send 
herewith to you : 

Bring flowers, as white as locks of snow, 
And let them shed their perfume sweet 

Upon the offering which we lay 
Of love and reverence at your feet. 



NINETY-ONE. 



" He liveth long who liveth well; 
All other life is short and vain ; 
He liveth longest who can tell 

Of living most for heavenly gain." 

My dear friend, there is special warmth 
in the joy awakened by this anniversary. 
Length of days upon earth is a blessing 
much in proportion as one's health, senses, 
and faculties are preserved; and the con- 
tinuance of these to an unusual decree in 
your case is the occasion of animated con- 
gratulations today. But, I need not say, 
mere continuance here, apart from the 
great end of our being, is of small ac- 
count. The fact that the secret of the 
Lord is upon your tabernacle gives pecul- 
iar zest to the rejoicing of friends at 
this time. 

In your person we see, what has often 
been seen — a renewed confirmation of the 
divine promises. Mrs. Mary Dwight, widow 



190 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

of President Dwight of Yale College, lived 
six months beyond your present period, 
and went to her Saviour on a Sabbath 
morning in 1845. Among the precious 
assurances of Holy Writ which were favor- 
ites with her, and often upon her lips, is 
this : " Even to your old age I am He, 
and even to hoar hairs will I carry you." 
The widow of Dr. Nathaniel Emmons fell 
asleep when almost ninety-one years of 
age, yet retaining her amiability of dis- 
position, her generous feelings and con- 
versational powers to the last. Till her 
ninety-first year she would attend sewing 
circles and social gatherings, contributing 
largely to the enjoyment of others. Greatly 
was she sustained and comforted by the 
doctrines of the cross, her trust in our 
Divine Redeemer being firm and childlike. 
It is a peculiarly touching spectacle when 
those who have had a long experience of 
the loneliness of widowhood not only re- 
ceive but exercise the ministries of kind- 
ness and usefulness. 



NINETY-OXE. 191 

But I would by no means forget that 
not a few live on, and celebrate later an- 
niversaries. In her ninety-first year Caro- 
line Herschel wrote : " I will at times try 
to amuse you with what passed in old 
times ; for my memory is as good as 
ever." In her ninety-second year she was 
busy with compiling a History of the Her- 
se/ie/s. At this age Luigi Cornaro com- 
posed his Earnest Exhortation to a Sober 
Life. The venerable Judge Boardman, of 
New Milford, Conn. , when he completed 
his ninetieth year (1858) was enjoying all 
his faculties; he continued his close habits 
of study, and contributed to the New Eng- 
lander a review of John C. Hamilton's life 
of his father, Alexander Hamilton. After 
Josiah Quincy had passed his ninetieth 
year, his comparatively hale figure might 
often be seen moving about the streets of 
Boston, where he was universally vener- 
ated ; and Sir Moses Montefiore made a 
journey to Jerusalem (1875), a record of 
which was printed for private circulation, 



192 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

giving the results of his labor. The patri- 
arch Jacob was ninety-one when Joseph 
was born. 

Many a friend is saying in thought, 
" Beloved, I wish above all things that 
thou mayest prosper and be in health, 
even as thy soul prospereth." Some meas- 
ure of infirmity has made its appearance, 
but dimness of vision and hearing are no 
hindrance to fellowship with Him "whom 
having not seen, ye love ; in whom, though 
now ye see him not, yet believing, ye 
rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of 
glory." As you journey on toward the 
holy hill of Zion, your eye is on the 
rainbow round about the throne, and on 
Him who is enthroned in an immortal, im- 
perial, yet youthful manhood, whose pres- 
ence there makes heaven what it is. You 
are almost home. Among the many in- 
scriptions, brief, simple, significant, which 
have been brought up from the Roman 
catacombs, the following is noteworthy: 



NINETY-ONE. 1 93 

In Christo Martyrius vixit cuinos plus, 
minus xci. Elexit domum vivus ; in pace: 

"In Christ Martyrius lived ninety -one 
years, more or less. He chose a home 
during his lifetime; in peace." This is a 
ign land, a land of exile ; but a wel- 
come awaits you, and you linger submis- 
sively till the summons is heard, " Come 
up hither." Dr. Samuel Miller, of Prince- 
Xew Jersey, at this age fell asleep 
in Jesus, with joyful tranquillity, saying, 
M Blessed Jesus, when thou wilt, where 
thou wilt, as thou wilt." With reference 
to that event no n can be more 

appropriate at any period. It brings to 
mind a prayer of Bishop Andrew-', com- 
posed for the aged: "We beseech thee for 
the close of our life, that thou wouldst 
direct it in peace — Christian, acceptable, 
sinless, shameless, and, if it please thee, 
painless, Lord, O Lord — gathering us to- 
gether under the feet of thine Elect, when 
thou wilt, and as thou wilt, only without 
shame and sins." 



194 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Thomas a Kempis attained to your pres- 
ent age, not only with mental powers un- 
impaired, but with the perfect use of eye- 
sight, unaided by artificial means. He 
had been fifty-eight years in the priest- 
hood, and sixty-three in a monastic order. 
After a short illness Sir Christopher Wren, 
the architect of St. Paul's Church, died at 
the age of ninety-one, and later genera- 
tions confess admiringly that the inscrip- 
tion, Lector, si quczris monumentum, cir- 
cumspice — " Reader, if thou seekest his 
monument, look around" — has lost none 
of its point. The Imitation of Christ, and 
its effect on many a heart and life, are 
the best memento of Thomas a Kempis. 
On every helpful production of the pen, 
and on the pulpit of every faithful min- 
ister who has been successful in building 
up lively stones into a spiritual house for 
the honor of the Great King, the most 
fitting inscription is, " If thou seekest his 
monument, look around." 



NINETY-TWO. 



The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made; 

Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become, 

As they draw near to their celestial home ; 

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view, 

That stand upon the threshold of the new. 

— Edmund Waller. 

Welcome day to you ! You have greatly 
the advantage of us who are younger and 
farther off, in that one foot is set on what 
may be the last step before the gate of 
New Jerusalem. You look back over a 
long vista of bright mercies and impres- 
sive providences. The curvature of the 
earth, which is such an obstruction to our 
seeing distant objects, is no hindrance to 
your vision. Even Mount Everest, the cul- 
minating summit of the Himalayas, twenty- 
seven thousand feet high, enables one to 



ig6 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

see only two hundred miles. But in the 
direction that you are now chiefly looking, 
objects are but little obscured. You see 
and hear much plainer than we do what 
there is and what is done within the city 
whose gates are not shut at all. 

You have asked me if the faculties of 
mind and body are not always greatly en- 
feebled when life continues till ninety-two. 
They are, to be sure, invariably impaired, 
and yet by no means reduced beyond the 
power of comfort to the possessor and of 
gratification to others. Among the an- 
cient Greeks, for instance, Xenophanes, who 
originated the doctrine of the oneness of 
the universe, would seem, from the frag- 
ments of one of his elegies, to have com- 
posed that piece at this age. It is said 
that the native general who held the island 
of Salsette, near to Bombay, for the Mah- 
rattas, against the East India Company's 
forces, was ninety-two, and when sum- 
moned to surrender the citadel of Tanna, 
answered, " I was not sent here for that 



NINETY-TWO. 1 97 

purpose." Dr. Eliphalet Nott, who had 
graduated over four thousand students 
from Union College, and who gave five 
hundred thousand dollars toward its en- 
dowment, lived bevond his ninetv-second 
birthday. It was not very long before 
that anniversary that I paid my respects 
to him, and was impressed by his remarks. 
At the funeral of Mr. William E. Dodge, of 
New York, I saw Peter Cooper, then ninety- 
two, and the oldest living resident who 
was a native of that city. On that day 
appeared a volume of his speeches relat- 
ing to the tariff, finance, and other subjects. 
Not a few men and women who close 
their earthly career at this age, escape ex- 
treme decrepitude. Such was the noble 
Spanish philanthropist, Las Casas, who 
went for the last time to Madrid to plead 
for American natives who suffered terri- 
ble wrongs ; Thomas Wilson, for fifty-eight 
years the faithful and revered Bishop of 
Soclor and Man, and also the Right Rev. 
Bishop Shute Barrington, who read the 



198 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Sunday lessons as usual to his household, 
saying it would be the last time, and a 
few days after passed away, almost im- 
perceptibly to his attendants. Such, too, 
was Thomas Mayhew, the first Governor of 
Martha's Vineyard and neighboring islands, 
who kept up his laborious interest in be- 
half of the Indians ; also the Rev. John 
Higginson, of Salem, Mass., who labored 
seventy-two years in the ministry, and of 
whom his colleague said in an elegy, he 

At ninety-three had comely face, 
Adorned with majesty and grace. 

You have made particular inquiry re- 
garding Mrs. Sarah Porter, the widow of 
Dr. David Porter, of Catskill,'N. Y., because 
late in life she became a parishioner of 
mine, and in the family of Dr. Rufus 
Anderson received unremitting kindness. 
She was the daughter of Rev. Daniel Col- 
lins, D.D., the first pastor in Lanesboro, 
where his ministry continued fifty-eight 
years. The mother of Mrs. Porter attained 



NINETY-TWO. 199 

the same age as herself, ninety-two years. 
In many respects Mrs. Porter was a re- 
markable woman. Tall and commanding 
in person, she was singularly gentle in 
manners, and always kindly thoughtful of 
those around her. She could speak evil 
of no one. The last ten years of her life 
were years of much suffering, to which 
was added the affliction of blindness, and 
though most of the time confined to her 
bed, patience and a sweet serenity of spirit 
did not fail. Her thoughts and heart went 
out toward relatives and friends with a 
regularity, particularity, and prayerful re- 
membrance that were most noteworthy. 
It became her daily occupation, and was 
a beautiful triumph of Christian love over 
infirmities and solitary confinement. Her 
room was the center of a widely and 
deeply effective influence. No complaint 
escaped her lips. Whatever the pain or 
other trial, she would often say to me, 
" God's government is a good government 
to live under." Resignation to divine ap- 



200 O UR BIR THDA VS. 

pointments, and gratitude for mercies, were 
unfailing. I never listened to any preach- 
ing, indirect and unintentional, that was 
more impressive than hers. Mrs. Porter 
would occasionally express surprise that 
she should be continued so long in what 
seemed to her to be uselessness. But in 
point of fact she was one of the most 
valuable members of the parish, not to say 
one of the most useful Christians living, 
in the last decade of her life. I once 
took occasion to tell her about a small 
island, which lies between the island of 
Skye and the Scottish mainland, and has 
a very rugged, dangerous coast. In it is a 
place of refuge for vessels, called " Muckle 
Harbor." The spot is difficult of access, 
but there is, or there was, living there a 
poor widow, whose lonely cottage is called 
"the lighthouse," because she keeps her lamp 
burning in her little window at night, and 
thus vessels are able to enter with safety. 
There she sits, without receiving pay, and 
trims her lamp, and thus saves many an 



NINETY-TWO. 201 

exposed crew and cargo. Aged Christians 
% * are lights in the world." It does not 
require a great light in order to be useful; 
it is not necessary to have a vigorous arm, 
and to be moving abroad, to aid mariners 
by guiding them into the desired haven. 
The little lamp and little window have re- 
lieved hundreds who were out in darkness 
and storms. 



NINETY-THREE. 



Those two gate-way sycamores you see — 

They were planted just so far asunder, 
That long well-pole from the path to free, 
And the wagon to pass safely under : 
Ninety-three ! 
Those two gate-way sycamores you see. 

— Ralph Hoyt. 

Yes, I see them ; and I see one sitting 
in the grateful shade of them. All three 
are of the same a°;e. I congratulate the 
trees for their service, and the other one 
in the group for this welcome anniver- 
sary. All three are having a green old 
age. 

I now write not only to send a cor- 
dial greeting, but also to ask a favor. 
Please give your recipe for keeping mind 
and heart so long without wrinkles. To 
what shall friends attribute this unusual 
longevity — faculties well preserved, and 



204 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

cheerfulness uniformly maintained ? Have 
you some private elixir of life ? You hold 
the pen of a ready writer, and your clear 
handwriting is still a proof of steady nerves. 
I am reminded that Cassiodorus wrote his 
De Orthographia Liber at ninety-three. He 
lived through the reigns of numerous suc- 
cessive kings in the fifth and sixth cen- 
turies, as your life has run parallel with 
the administration of as many Presidents 
of these United States. 

To your known regularity of habits 
and strict abstemiousness must be attrib- 
uted in part the continuance of health and 
such a measure of strength. It is remark- 
able how much a regimen like yours may 
effect, even when the constitution is not 
originally vigorous. Sir Hans Sloane, the 
eminent physician and naturalist — the first 
English physician to be created a baronet 
— who was noted for contributing to char- 
itable purposes his entire thirty years' sal- 
ary as physician to Christ's Hospital, Lon- 
don, was attacked by hemorrhages when a 



NINETY-THREE. 205 

youth ; but he abstained from wine and 
other stimulants, and his life was pro- 
longed to ninety-three. He illustrated his 
own favorite maxim, that sobriety and tem- 
perance are the best preservatives granted 
to mankind. Another eminent physician, 
Sir Edward Wilmot, when a youth, seemed 
to be so far gone in consumption that 
Dr. Radcliffe gave friends no hope of his 
recovery; yet he lived to this age. Adam 
Ferguson, the Scottish philosopher and his- 
torian, notwithstanding a severe paralytic 
shock at fifty, survived to ninety-three, and 
in the mean time continued his authorship. 
He adopted and adhered to a vegetable 
diet. To his ninety-fourth year Jacopo 
Sansovino carried on his labor of adorn- 
ing Venice with magnificent buildings ; 
and Dr. Samuel Nott, of Franklin, Conn., 
continued in the regular discharge of min- 
isterial duties. After that time he preached 
only occasionally. On Caroline Herschcls 
ninety-third birthday, March 16, 1843, the 
Crown Prince and Princess, with about 



206 OUR BIRTHDAYS, 

thirty other distinguished visitors, engaged 
her attention all day, so that she had no 
time to eat a morsel. 

Upon entering his ninety-third year 
Bishop Hough wrote a letter as follows : 
" I apprehend I shall not live to see much 
more of the coming year, though I wear 
out leisurely, and am free from sickness 
and pain. The moderate degree of under- 
standing which God was pleased to give 
me does not impair. I have no doubt that 
when our gracious Redeemer comes in all 
his glory to judge mankind, you and I, 
with all faithful people, shall, through the 
mercy of God and in his merits, find a 
place at his right hand. What our por- 
tion may be in his kingdom is known 
only to his Father and Himself ; but this 
is revealed to us, that there are pleasures 
above our conception, and durable to all 
eternity." The excellent mother of Oliver 
Cromwell left the world at this age. She 
had earnestly begged that she might not 
be interred in a royal tomb, but taken to 



NINETY-THREE. 20y 

some simple grave in a country church- 
yard. Amidst the splendors of Whitehall 
she continued anxious for her son in his 
perilous eminence ; and shortly before her 
departure gave him, then Lord Protector, 
her blessing in these noble words : " The 
Lord cause his face to shine upon you, 
and comfort you in all your adversities ; 
and enable you to do great things for the 
glory of the Most High God, and to be a 
relief unto his dear people ! My dear son, 
I leave my heart with thee ; good night." 

" Good night ! now cometh gentle sleep, 
And tears that fall like welcome rain ; 
Good night ! O holy, blest, and deep 

The rest that follows pain ! 
How should we reach God's upper light 
If life's long day had no good night ! " 



NINETY-FOUR. 



" Like a patriarchal sage, 

Holy, humble, courteous, mild, 
He could blend the awe of age 
With the sweetness of a child." 

Smiles and good wishes abound this 
morning. Many more pleasant thoughts 
and warm greetings than you have seen 
years are awakened. Friends never hear 
you sigh, " Give me back my youth!" You 
are looking forward with animating expec- 
tation to an immortality of youth. It 
will have none of the perils, passions, 
foibles, or mistakes of this earthly period. 
Nor will any present weaknesses, of which 
you speak, hold over into the paradisaical 
future. But it is yourself, rather than your 
friends, who make mention of them ; we 
can join you only in giving thanks for 



2IO OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

such freedom from them as you experi- 
ence. It is an inspiration to others ; and 
it reconciles them to the thought of pos- 
sible birthdays up among the nineties. 

We call to mind today the Pan- A the- 
naicum of Isocrates, one of the famous 
Athenian orators, which he wrote in his 
ninety-fourth year ; the noble painting, the 
" Battle of Lepanto," executed by Titian 
when he was no younger than you now 
are ; and the work of Cornaro on the 
Birth and Death of Man, a product of 
the same age. He says of himself: "I am 
now as healthy as any man of twenty-five 
years of age. I write daily seven or eight 
hours, and the rest of the time I occupy 
in walking, conversing, and occasionally 
in attending concerts. I am happy, and rel- 
ish everything that I eat. My imagina- 
tion is lively, my memory tenacious, my 
judgment good ; and what is most remark- 
able in a person of my advanced age, my 
voice is strong and harmonious." The 
American Association of Science, at its 



NINETY-FO UR, 211 

meeting in Boston, 1880, sent a congrat- 
ulatory telegram to M. Chevreul, the well- 
known and still laborious professor of 
chemistry at Paris, who then reached his 
ninety-fifth year. At ninety-four the Rev. 
Daniel Waldo was serving as chaplain to 
the House of Representatives in Congress, 
and Miss Monkton by her vivacity, good 
taste in dress, and agreeable manners, drew 
around her a large circle of gratified guests 
in London. 

You have frequently spoken of our 
Heavenly Father's kindness, not simply in 
continuing life, but in his gracious care 
and in his spiritual manifestations. The 
promise, " Even to hoar hairs will I carry 
you,'' finds manifest fulfillment. It is as a 
mother or as a nurse that He carries the 
aged. Underneath are the everlasting arms, 
but the gentleness shown is equal to the 
strength. You insist that reduced vitality 
on your part is clearly obvious ; that the 
eye and the ear, those sentinels so needful 
for personal safety and for communication 



212 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

with the world around, grow dull ; that the 
heart, that muscular engine by which the 
blood is sent vigorously along wonted chan- 
nels, loses its former propelling power; 
that a degree of heaviness and listlessness 
ensues. But you bear witness that the 
Mighty One of Israel is at hand, now that 
the demands of extreme life become more 
urgent. He does indeed take up infirm 
disciples, and carry them most tenderly. 
Never has he let fall one thus folded in 
his arms. Forgetfulness or weariness can 
never be charged upon him. Turning to 
the forty-sixth chapter of Isaiah, one will 
notice with what keen irony false gods — 
Bel and Nebo, and their images — are pic- 
tured as being borne away on beasts of 
burden. Instead of possessing power to 
rescue their votaries, they are themselves 
carried off as plunder. Are not modern 
idols equally powerless ? Mammon gives 
no comfort in advanced years. Philosophy 
alone cannot cheer the aged. Skepticism 



NINE TY-FO UR. 213 

yields nothing but gloom to a man, how- 
ever brilliant his genius and however vocif- 
erous the admiration of the multitude. 
11 I now found myself," so Rousseau, though 
not an old man, confessed, " in the decline 
of life, a prey to tormenting maladies, and 
believing myself at the close of a career, 
without having once tasted the sublime 
pleasures after which my heart panted. 
Why was it that, with a soul naturally 
expansive, whose very existence was be- 
nevolence, I have never found one single 
friend with feelings like my own? A prey 
to the cravings of a heart which has never 
been satisfied, I perceived myself arrived 
at the confines of old age, and dying ere 
I had begun to live." Never will the skep- 
tic find a friend, true and able, till he 
trustfully acknowledges the Holy and Faith- 
ful One who upheld that patriarch who 
was called the " Friend of God." The 
Ancient of Days alone can fill and satisfy 
the soul. All shattered idols are at length 



214 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

carried off on ships of the desert, while 
desolation and darkness settle upon the 
habitation of those trusting in them. But 
with the believer, " at evening time there 
shall be light." 



NINETY-FIVE. 



The Land beyond the Sea! 

How close it often seems, 
When flushed with evening's peaceful gleams, 
And the wistful heart looks o'er the strait, 
and dreams ! 

It longs to fly to thee, 

Calm Land beyond the Sea. 

The Land beyond the Sea ! 

When will our toil be done ? 
Slow-footed years ! more swiftly run 
Into the gold of the unsetting sun ! 

Homesick we are for thee, 

Calm Land beyond the Sea ! 

— F. W. Faber. 

" Homesick for heaven," I once heard 
you say, my friend ; but you added, " The 
will of the Lord be done." Resigned to live 
may indeed sometimes be less easy than 
resigned to go hence. You speak of its 
being mysterious that an unproductive life 
should be continued; but yours is a joy 
and help to us who are younger. You 



2l6 OUR BIRTHDAYS, 

always make us think of heaven, for we 
see you in the calm, sweet twilight between 
time and eternity. Please never think that 
the mountain peak is of no use. Does it 
not condense and send down showers that 
feed the fountains below? For a saint to 
remain here ninety-five years, and to spend 
much time in prayer, is as far as can well 
be from uselessness ; it is not so much 
growing old, as growing in grace, clinging 
closer to the Ancient of Days, and com- 
muning more freely with him. 

Ninety-five is sometimes quite pro- 
ductive. When fully ninety-five Sir Moses 
Montefiore was foremost in raising relief 
funds for the famine-stricken of Persia one 
year, and for those of Armenia and Kur- 
distan the next year. That is " bringing 
forth fruit in old age," just as the orange 
tree sometimes yields a golden crop for 
nearly or quite a century. Peter de Wallen- 
crona, a Swedish baron, did not cease from 
his benevolent labors till ninety-five winters 
had passed over him. His life was devoted 



NINETY-FIVE. 2 1 7 

to the welfare of his countrymen. For 
thirty-two years he edited the Gazette of 
Ritral and Domestic Economy ; he founded 
eleven savings banks, three schools, two in- 
fant asylums, and enlarged several hospi- 
tals in the kingdom. He was Knight of 
the Order of Charles the Twelfth, also of the 
Order of Gustavus Vasa ; but according 
to a custom of the realm, when the male 
line of any family becomes extinct their 
escutcheon is broken; so now in the Church 
of the Nobles at Stockholm a herald pub- 
licly performed that office with the armo- 
rial shields of the Wallencronas, a family 
whose title of nobility had been conferred 
on the field of Pultowa. The good man's 
name, however, had achieved a place in 
the popular heart which insured its honor 
beyond all contingencies of artificial her- 
aldry. Wordsworth might have had him 
in mind : 

But an old age serene and bright, 
And lovely as a Lapland night, 
Shall lead thee to thy grave. 



2l8 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

New attachments are, it is true, hardly 
to be looked for at this period, but there 
may be youthfulness in the old ones. A 
peculiar interest will always gather around 
the friend who is spared so far beyond the 
usual term of earthly pilgrimage. Espe- 
cially is that true when, as in your case, 
the faculties of mind and heart have not 
sensibly declined. All, even the highest, 
bow to such. Henry III, of France, accom- 
panied by a numerous train, paid a visit at 
Florence to the famous painter Titian, in 
his ninety-fifth year. The venerable artist 
received the monarch with dignity. There 
was but slight decrepitude in his fine per- 
son, and his manners were still noble and 
engaging. 

The ninety-fifth psalm is just the one 
for this birthday : " O come, let us sing 
unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise 
to the Rock of our salvation. O come, let 
us worship and bow down : let us kneel 
before the Lord our Maker. For he is 
our God ; and we are the people of his 



NINETY-FIVE. 2icj 

pasture, and the sheep of his hand." To 

be led and fed so long by the Good Shep- 
herd involves a vast outlay of care and 
kindness on his part. Who would fail to 
abound in prayer and praise on such an 
anniversary ! Every year of such a life is 
a protest against forgetfulness of God, as 
each of the ninety-five theses which Luther 
posted on the door of the Castle Church 
at Wittenberg was a protest against some 
error. I once attended the funeral of a 
parishioner who had attained to this age ; 
yet in death her countenance was beauti- 
ful, scarcely a wrinkle being visible. Nor 
was her Christian character less pleasing 
to contemplate. Though in poverty, feeble- 
ness, and blindness — the latter of fifteen 
years' standing — she uttered no complaint, 
but her constant testimony was, "Surely 
goodness and mercy shall follow me all 
the days of my life." For something like 
twoscore years she made it a practice to 
repeat the twenty-third psalm daily; and 
even at the approach of death, after c 



220 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

ing to recognize familiar voices, she spent 
her last articulate breath saying: "The Lord 
is my shepherd, I shall not want. He mak- 
eth me to lie down in green pastures, he 
leadeth me beside the still waters." The 
Rev. John Dod, a devout and pithy Puritan, 
more than two years before his death — 
still vigorous, and maintaining exalted se- 
renity amidst civil commotions — at ninety- 
five wrote to Lady Vere (1642): "Though 
I look and expect every day to be plun- 
dered and lose all, yet I thank God I have 
a treasure laid up where none of these 
plunderers can enter, and resolve that the 
worst which can be done to me in this 
life is but to do more for me than all 
my by-past prayers these fifty years could 
ever effect for me — to send me quickly 
home, long since weary of this world and 
all it could ever show me. ... I take my 
leave, assuring you first that whatsoever 
the proclamation on earth may be, yet that 
that great proclamation from heaven shall 



KIXETY-FIVE. 221 

and must stand — ' Say unto the right- 
eous that it shall he well with them, for 
the works of their hands shall be given 
them.' ' His house was plundered three 
times by the King's party ; all which he 
patiently endured, calling to remembrance 
one of his old sayings, " Sanctified afflic- 
tions are spiritual promotions." Dr. Na- 
thaniel Emmons, not long before his de- 
cease at this age, speaking of heaven, said : 
" I want to see who is there ; I want to 
see Brother Sanford, and Brother Niles, and 
Brother Spring, and Dr. Hopkins, and Dr. 
West, and a great many other ministers 
with whom I have been associated in this 
world, but who have gone before me. I 
believe I shall meet them in heaven, and 
it seems to me our meeting there must 
be peculiarly interesting." He then added : 
" I want to see, too, the old prophets and 
the apostles. What a society there will be 
in heaven ! There we shall see such men 
as Moses, and Isaiah, and Elijah, and Dan- 



222 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

iel, and Paul. I want to see Paul more 
than any other man I can think of." With 
great apparent emotion he said : "I do love 
the gospel. It appears to me more and 
more wonderful and glorious every day. I 
think I now understand something about 
the gospel ; but I expect, if ever I get to 
heaven, to understand a great deal more." 



NINETY-SIX. 



Upward steals the life of man 
As the sunshine from the wall, 
From the wall into the sky, 
From the roof along the spire ; 
Ah ! the souls of those that die 
Are but sunbeams lifted higher. 

— H. JV. Longfellow. 

How many times has a birthday brought 
joy to your heart, my friend ! In speaking 
of it to me you have uniformly spoken 
also of the closing scene on earth, and 
have called that the birthday into eternity. 
It is truly helpful to find you have such 
firm belief that the best part of your exist- 
ence is yet to come; that the present life 
is worth living chiefly on account of an 
endless and Morious life beyond. Without 
that assurance would your days probably 
have been prolonged to the present time? 



224 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Is not such a bright prospect both a pal- 
liative and a prophylactic ? " I must re- 
luctantly observe," was the gloomy con- 
fession of Gibbon, " that two causes — the 
abbreviation of time, and the failure of 
hope — will always tinge with a browner 
shade the evening of life " — all which 
your experience and your lips contradict. 
Brevity of remaining life is not an occa- 
sion of sadness to you. Hope does not 
fail. You are glad that evening has come; 
and the tinge is not browner, but brighter. 
After a long and laborious day the approach 
of bed-time is a joy. You are expecting 
soon to have congratulations from the other 
side. 

You have remarked repeatedly that the 
number of your birthdays has far exceeded 
former expectation, and that this is a great 
surprise. It is not for me to attempt a 
full solution, but certain negative reasons 
are obvious. This has not come about by 
indulgence at the table, nor by tarrying 
long at the wine, nor by despondency or 



NINETY-SIX. 



moroseness ; not by fretfulness or gram- 

bling. Simplicity and regularity of habil 

hopefulness, active regard for the well- 
being of others, are among the conditions 
that favor longevity. I have never read 
of Pope, monk, or monarch, who attained 
to your age. More persons in humble 
than in high life reach fourscore and six- 
teen. When General Lafayette was revis- 
iting this countrv, he dined one day at 
Alexandria. The landlord entered, and 
whispered to a gentleman at the table that 
a very aged revolutionary soldier from Dela- 
ware wished to see the general. He had 
traveled a great way ; they had given him 
a dinner, and he awaited an audience. 
" Show him in," was the reply ; " the gen- 
eral is always at home to his old com- 
rades." The veteran entered the room. 
" Your servant, General," said he. " An 
old man's blessing be with you. They call 
you old ; but you are quite a boy to me. 
I am ninety-six. You arc much altered, 
truly, since I saw you at Brandywine. Ah! 



226 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

there was hot work there. I am heartily 
glad to see you. I have traveled all the 
way on foot. Sure, some kind gentleman 
offered to pay the old fellow's passage in 
the stage; but no, I have always marched — 
I can march still — though I am in pretty 
quick step to the grave." Another soldier 
patriot of the Revolution, Robert McCul- 
loch, lived to be ninety-six. His death was 
occasioned by a fall, at Manlius, N. Y. , 
1855. There was a great throng at the 
funeral of this man of uprightness and 
kindness, who witnessed the surrender of 
Burgoyne, and who never had occasion to 
call a physician. These men, no doubt, 
were possessed by nature of a very com- 
plete organization ; maintained habits and 
lived in conditions suited to escape from 
preventable maladies. With proper sani- 
tary arrangements and regimen, many more 
might reach at least the neighborhood of 
one hundred years. 

From a passage in the prophecy of 
Jeremiah (Hi: 23), it appears that on the 



NINETY-SIX. 22 J 

capital of a pillar in Solomon's temple there 
were ninety-six pomegranates. Ornament 
and usefulness were thus symbolized by the 
significant carving. So many years, en- 

riched and beautified by the good hand of 
our God, are now completed in your life 
here below. You would not have the num- 
ber any less, nor would you have it greatly 
increased. If aged believers are on a de- 
clivity, they are going up, and cannot be 
far from the summit. When the earthly 
hour-glass is turned for the last time, and 
methods of measuring duration in another 
world begin, no doubt the shortness of the 
present pilgrimage will seem more impres- 
sive than it does now, and whatever of 
weariness there is will be wholly forgotten. 
Quiet, submissive waiting has many tran- 
quil enjoyments ; and devout meditation is 
a luxury which you have long enjoyed. 
It is a delightful occupation, too seldom 
exercised in this acre of hurry- The high 
average of longevity which we notice among 
the Friends must be partly owing to the 



228 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

self-possession and quietness of spirit which 
they cultivate. I join you in giving thanks 
for a peaceful, serene evening before the 
hour of retiring to rest. That column in 
the ancient temple to which I have re- 
ferred, was, as you recollect, carried away 
to Babylon ; but every one belonging to 
the true Israel of God, and faithful to the 
last, shall be made a pillar in the temple 
on high, and shall "go no more out." 



NINETY-SEVEN. 



" Serenely waiting on the western hills, 
In the full glow of deepening sunset skies." 

" Only a small piece of the afternoon 
remains;" so you remarked to me the other 
day. But, my friend, there are no clouds 
on the horizon, and it was not in sadness 
that you spoke. You have a ministry of 
cheerfulness still to perform; and in behalf 
of many friends I give you a right hand 
of fellowship today. We welcome you to 
the service of an example in this regard 
which is more effective than ordinary pul- 
pit ministrations. Indeed, you were in- 
stalled in that line of service a lono- while 
ago. Benefit to others is your gratifying 
salarv, and it comes a o-ood deal oftener 
than in quarterly installments. Xo vaca- 
tion occurs. You have shown us that in- 



230 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

firmity is not unhappiness, but you are 
saved from the frequent reminder of being 
superannuated ; you do not talk about being 
a supernumerary. 

You have asked concerning others who 
attained to your present age. It is said 
that Cratinus, one of the celebrated comic 
poets of Athens, wrote his last perform- 
ance, The Flagon, at ninety-seven, and that 
it carried off a prize. Dr. Oliver Partridge, 
of Stockbridge, Mass. , was still in medical 
practice, and lived yet two years. Dr. 
Holyoke wrote, February 9, 1826: "I am 
now between ninety-seven and ninety-eight 
years old, and enjoy good health, excepting 
now and then a cramp in my lower extrem- 
ities." He lived yet three years. 

It is, of course, not strange that this 
should prove to be the limit of life to 
some. Thus it was with Dr. Thomas Good- 
win (born in 1600; died 1697), a Puritan 
divine whose theological treatises fill five 
folio volumes. He and Owen have been 



NINETl SE VEN. 23 1 

pronounced the two Atlases and Patriarchs 
of Independency. The same was also the 
age of General Oglethorpe, the founder of 
Georgia. Ninety-seven has been reached 
by several women of note, as Mrs. Garrick, 
widow of the celebrated actor, who was 
attractive up to this line of life ; and Eliz- 
abeth, the widow of Gen. Alexander Ham- 
ilton, who survived her husband more than 
half a century. It has been mentioned as 
something noteworthy that the first Mar- 
quis of Winchester, at this age, saw one 
hundred and three descendants of his; but 
Mrs. Dolly Stephens, of Roxbury, X. J., left 
two hundred and forty-four living descend- 
ants, some of them in the fifth generation. 
Bodily weakness does not imply decrep- 
itude of soul. Even though memory fails 
somewhat, it is still a casket of bright 
mercies, and they are only fore-gleams of 
a glorious future. What toiler was ever 
sorry to see the sun close to the horizon ? 
I am reminded of a member of the Eliot 



232 OUR BIRTHDAYS, 

congregation, Boston — an interesting in- 
stance of faculties well preserved till this 
age. It was more than natural that, as 
pastor, I should become intimately ac- 
quainted with her. The family lineage ran 
back to a younger brother of Sir Henry 
Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, a family 
which is one of the few in England that 
can trace their pedigree so far even as the 
fourteenth century. In early life she com- 
mitted to memory the Assembly's Shorter 
Catechism with literal accuracy, and re- 
tained the same to her last days. She 
would put her children through the cate- 
chism after they had themselves become 
even grandparents. Under the influence 
of truths embodied in that little formulary 
her character received its type of firm loy- 
alty to sound doctrine, law and order — 
order in the family, the church, and so- 
ciety. Whatever appeared to be duty be- 
came a pleasure to her. Regarding secret 
prayer and the reading of God's Word, no 



XINETY-SEVEN. 233 

thought seemed ever to enter her mind 
except to maintain constancy and find prof- 
itable enjoyment therein. Her memory, 
early stored with hymns, supplied her with 
unfailing delight. For some scores of years 
it was her habit every night, after retiring* 
to rest, to repeat the hymn, 

And now another day has gone, 
I'll sing my Maker's praise. 

In her later years, at the hour of evening 
twilight, it was her joy to sing or repeat 
certain favorites, such as, 

When to the west the sun descends. 

She always took cheerful views of life and 
of its close. She made public confession of 
her faith in Christ the same day with her 
husband, and during forty-five years of wid- 
owhood her walk with God did not seem 
overcast with clouds, nor was it attended 
with sighing or complaining. Children and 
children's children, to the fifth generation, 



234 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

account her memory a richer legacy than 
any that could pass through the probate 
office. 

" The aged Christian stands upon the shore 
Of Time, a storehouse of experience, 
Filled with the treasures of rich heavenly lore ; 
I love to sit and draw from her, from thence, 
Sweet recollections of her journey past, 
A journey crowned with blessing to the last." 



NINETY-EIGHT. 



"For the splendor of the sunsets, 

Vast mirrored on the sea; 
For the gold-fringed clouds that curtain 

Heaven's inner mystery; 
For the molten hues of twilight, 

Where thought leans, glad yet awed ; 
For the glory of the sunsets, 

I thank thee, O my God." 

Never is the King of Day more kingly 
than when his chariot lingers on the hori- 
zon. We contemplate the scene with ad- 
miring gaze, and would gladly arrest all 
diminution of its splendors if we could. 

In the Bible only one person is named 
whose age corresponded with yours, my 
friend, but his senses were not so well 
preserved: " Now Eli was ninety and eight 
years old, and his eyes were dim that he 
could not see." Shem, probably still in his 
prime, was ninety-eight when he entered 
the ark. 



236 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

The tallest trees are, of course, some- 
what scattered, but the one that lacks only 
two feet of being a hundred in height is 
not altogether solitary. Of the two hun- 
dred names that occur in the four volumes 
of Dr. Middleton's Evangelical Biography, 
John Dod is the only one who came so 
near as you now are to a century on earth. 
He was a cheerful man, and a learned and 
deeply pious divine of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. It was his habit, when he saw a 
professing Christian who looked sad, to say, 
as Jonadab did to Amnon, "Art not thou 
a King's son?" When such complained of 
their losses and crosses, he would reply, 
" God hath taken away your children, your 
goods; but he hath not taken away himself, 
nor Christ, nor his Spirit, nor heaven, nor 
eternal life." Another compeer of yours 
was Rev. John Bakewell, to whom is ascribed 
the hymn, 

" Hail ! thou once despised Jesus," 

and who had been a preacher for more than 
seventy years. I have a gratifying recollec- 



NINETl -EIGHT. 237 

tion of Dr. Samuel Nott, of Franklin, Conn., 
a brother of President Nott, of Union Col- 
lege, who passed several months beyond 
the ninety-eighth anniversary of his birth, 
and whose decease was due not to old age, 
but to an injury. You may recall the case 
of Judge Paine Wingate, of New Hamp- 
shire, whose married life lasted three quar- 
ters of a century, and whose widow lived 
one hundred years and eight months. In 
the same State, at North Conway, died, 1S6S, 
Jonathan Eastman, aged ninety-eight years 
and ten months, retaining his faculties to 
a remarkable degree, and having been a 
deacon of the Congregational church in 
that place for fifty-seven years. The mother 
of President Edwards retained her mental 
vigor, and she was a woman, withal, of 
vigorous piety. Mrs. Dr. Eli Smith (Sarah 
Lanman Huntington), of Norwich, Conn., 
speaks of the Sabbath school with which 
she was connected among the Mohicans as 
being held in a house occupied by the rela- 
tives of Rev. Samson Occom, whose sister, 



238 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Lucy Tantiquigeon, died in 1829, at the age 
of ninety-eight, leaving children, grandchil- 
dren, great-grandchildren, and great-great- 
grandchildren. 

I congratulate you on the abiding pres- 
ence of One who is the same yesterday, and 
today, and forever. It seems to me that 
believers vitally united to him, as a branch 
to the vine, should not be contemplated as 
growing old, but rather as growing wiser 
and better. Their best days, so far from 
being passed, have not even come yet, nor 
will they ever be over. 

One habit of yours must stand con- 
nected with a certain secret of this lon- 
gevity — you have been wont to take hope- 
ful views of men and things. You have 
avoided underestimating younger people. 
I have noticed that you now and then 
quote these words: "Say not thou, What is 
the cause that the former days were better 
than these?" The farther one gets on in 
life, the more is a somber style of thinking, 
a somewhat pessimistic tone, liable to be- 



NINETY-EIGHT 239 

come excessive and fixed. Coupled with 
that is the habit of noticing apparent 
slights ; of dwelling on tokens of degen- 
eracy ; of thinking that the age, the world, 
is going to the bad. True, the young may 
be deficient in due respect for the aged. 
Instead of smiling at senility, and commis- 
erating it, they might better look sober in 
view of their own inexperience, and feel 
sad in view of their own weaknesses ; but 
for the aged to worry will not reform them. 
It is well to put on glasses often, and see 
if a bright side of things cannot be found, 
or if none is found, to set about making a 
bright side. It is not true, my friend, that 
the value of life necessarily declines with 
advance in years ; for special weight and 
worth often attach to the utterances and 
habits of the aged. The revealed glorious 
purposes and promises of God do not per- 
mit you to be downcast, and your well- 
grounded hopefulness is a benediction to 
neighbors. It was at ninety-eight that Sir 
Moses Montefiorc, who lived to be fully one 



240 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

hundred years of age, made his last will 
and testament. The document begins with 
a touching expression of thankfulness to 
God for continuing to him an unclouded 
mind and cheerful spirits. Your testimony 
is in the same strain of gratitude and 
praise. 

Many of the jasmines are most fra- 
grant during the twilight. If there were 
no sunsets, who would know much about 
the starry heavens? I bring you congratu- 
lations today that you are not to live here 
always ; that soul and body may part com- 
pany ; that infirmities are all to be left 
behind, and that immortal youth is not 
far off. 



NINETY-NINE. 



An age that melts with unperceived decay, 
And glides in modest innocence away ; 
Whose peaceful day benevolence endears, 
Whose night congratulating conscience cheers; 
The general favorite, as the general friend — 
Such age there is, and who shall wish it end ? 

— Samuel Johnson, 

But for inconsistency in the dates, one 
would think that you, my friend, mio-ht 
have sat for . the portrait thus drawn by 
Dr. Johnson. He was not a cheery man ; 
was, indeed, hypochondriacaily disposed, and 
must have had somebody besides himself 
in mind when he began the sketch given 
above. %k Unperceived decay ; " there is in 
all cases some measure of decline — im- 
paired circulation, a lower degree of ani- 
mal heat, and an increased sensitiveness 
to cold ; less of luster in the eye and the 
hair; while general elasticity is diminished. 
No organ or function can be expected to 



242 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

retain its full integrity. Yet there have 
been cases, like your own, in which the 
senses and faculties were remarkably pre- 
served. One of the most signal in modern 
times is that of Titian, who was carried off 
by the plague in 1596, his powers not very 
sensibly weakened. Though wanting only 
a year to fill out a century of life, he was 
engaged upon painting his Pieta, which 
may be seen in a gallery at Venice, and 
is said to exhibit a singular steadiness of 
hand. Dr. Martin J. Routh, president of 
Magdalen College, Oxford, a man of great 
learning and talent, was close upon ninety- 
nine (1854), his health having continued 
good, and his habits of research being 
kept up to the last. When the Rev. Canon 
Beadon, who died June 10, 1879, aged one 
hundred and two, attained to ninety-nine, 
the Queen sent her congratulations, and 
shortly afterward forwarded her photograph, 
signed by herself. To most of the letters 
which he received on that occasion the 
canon sent immediate replies, written with 



NINETY-NINE. 243 

his own hand. His long life was due in 
part to an imperturbable temper. When 
Abraham was ninety years old and nine, 
the Lord appeared to him and said unto 
him : " I am the Almighty God ; walk be- 
fore me, and be thou perfect, and I will 
make my covenant between me and thee, 
and will multiply thee exceedingly." A vig- 
orous old man at Willoughby in Notting- 
hamshire, after his ninety-ninth birthday, 
1835, mowed twenty acres of thistles in 
July of that year. Dr. Holyoke, the cen- 
tenarian physician of Salem, Mass. , did 
not retire from practice till this period. 
In the summer of his one hundredth year, 
Dr. Sawyer received an invitation from the 
town authorities of Hebron, Conn., to pay 
them a visit. On the Lord's Day after 
reaching the place, he preached; but be- 
fore the sermon he administered baptism to 
four children on the green in front of the 
church. Addressing those who were pres- 
ent he remarked, "A hundred years ago, 
or nearly, my father and mother brought 



244 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

me in their arms to be baptized on this 
very spot." I have a very pleasant recollec- 
tion of " Father Cleveland," the Rev. Charles 
Cleveland of Boston, whose ninety-ninth 
birthday occurred June 21, 1871, and who 
held a reception at his house on East 
Springfield Street from nine in the morn- 
ing, through the day and evening. He was 
in the enjoyment of excellent health and 
spirits. To the question, " What do you 
think has made your health so good and 
kept you living to such a great age ? " he 
replied, " Early rising, regular habits, and 
not using tobacco or spirits." " Yes," added 
his sister, aged eighty-seven, " and a cheer- 
ful disposition." " I am as sound as a nut," 
he said, further ; " no pains or aches, no 
rheumatism or gout on me." The follow- 
ing are the first of some lines which he 
wrote that day, without the use of glasses : 

Ninety-nine years have passed away 
Since first I saw the light of day ; 
In Thee, dear Lord, I live and move ; 
Thy banner over me is love. 



i INETY-NINE. 

All have noticed that memory is the 
dtv which o-ives earliest token of decay. 
That was true of Fontenelle, who yet kept 
up his literary interest, and who came but 
a little short of a century. His pleasantry, 
however, did not wane. " I am about to 
depart," he said, " and have sent the heavy 
baggage ?n before." Through life he v 
iistinguished for his even temper, unruffled 
demeanor, and steady avoidance of all 
violent exertions, either mental or bodily. 
Similar was it with Mrs. Mary Clark, the 
mother of the late Dr. Joseph S. Clark, of 
I jston. The rooms of the old family man- 
sion in South Plymouth were thronged on 
the ;n of her ninety-ninth birthday, 

1861. It was, in good measure, a religious 
id all felt a deep respect for the 
in Israel. Seating herself in the 
beside the officiat g 3 man, 

old lady remarked, "If anybody comes 
in older than I am, they shall have my 

She " -four d 

of one hundr 



246 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

This is not a wintry period ; but if ever 
so called, it should bring to mind the purity 
and beauty of the mantle which covers wide 
sections of the earth at that season. Whose 
thought would not go forward to the ap- 
proach of spring and its beautiful symbols 
of rejuvenation ? Yet, however eager the 
longing for that season of fresh life, we 
would neither be impatient nor ambitious of 
delay. Vincent Handry, an eloquent French 
Jesuit, whose published writings comprise 
nearly thirty volumes, had been hoping to 
become a centenarian, and his last moments 
were embittered by finding that he could 
not reach that coveted goal. Ninety-nine 
was his limit. 

"A little old woman before me 
Went slowly down the street, 
Walking as if aweary 

Were her feeble, tottering feet. 

" From under an old poke bonnet 
I caught a gleam of snow, 
And her waving cap-string floated 
Like a pennon to and fro. 



NINETY-NINE. 247 

" In the folds of her rusty mantle 
Sudden her footsteps caught, 
And I sprang to keep her from falling, 
With a touch as quick as thought. 

"When, under the old poke bonnet, 
I saw a winsome face 
Framed in with the flaxen ringlets 
Of my wee daughter Grace. 

" Mantle and cap together 

Dropped off at my very feet ; 
And there stood the little fairy, 
Beautiful, blushing, sweet ! 

" Will it be like this, I wonder, 
When at last we come to stand 
On the golden, ringing pavement 
Of the blessed, blessed land ? 

" Losing the rusty garments 

We wore in the years of Time, 
Will our better selves spring backward 
Serene in a youth sublime ? 

" Instead of the shapes that hid us 
And made us old and gray, 
Shall we get our child hearts back again, 
With a brightness that will stay ? 

"I thought — but my little daughter 

Slipped her dimpled hand in mine ; 
' I was only playing,' she whispered, 
'That I was ninety-nine.'" 



ONE HUNDRED. 



The Traveler girds her to depart ; 

She turns her toward the setting sun ; 
With morning's freshness in her heart 
Her evening journey is begun. 

— Lucy Larcom. 

All hail! So say we all — some of us 
grayheaded, yet young in comparison. We 
are specially happy in paying our respects 
to one who, by entering on another cen- 
tury, seems to be leaving us out of account. 
It fills us with delight to find you so well, 
so comfortable, and so young, for a cente- 
narian. We look up to you 1 with a foot on 
the last stepping-stone to heaven, where all 
are young, and always young. It is only 
one in many, many thousands of those 
born into this world who do not leave it 
before rounding out a century. Although 
life insurance companies, as a general 
thing, do not issue policies except to se- 

1 Mrs. Lucy Waterman. 



250 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

lected lives, yet twelve of the oldest and 
largest companies in London can furnish 
but a single case in which a person hold- 
ing a policy had reached this age. So 
seldom is a centenarian to be met with 
that, according to the civil law, where the 
fact of decease is not certainly known, the 
presumption of life ceases at the expira- 
tion of one hundred years from the date 
of birth. 

A hundred years ago, not one 
Of us had sprung to birth. 

So sang James Montgomery. But in 
your person these lines are contradicted 
today. Regarding most of the modern prod- 
igies of longevity, such as Thomas Parr, 
who is reputed to have lived to be one 
hundred and fifty-two, there is great doubt. 
Accurate chronological records are usually 
wanting in such cases, and much exagger- 
ation probably exists. But in the present 
instance the family Bible furnishes an au- 
thentic register. 

You have long been well known among 



ONE HLXDRED. 25 I 

us as one who loves the Bible and the 
sanctuary. We are reminded of a similar 
instance, that of Mrs. Lydia Briefs Blankin- 
ship, of Marion in this State, who attended 
public worship in the forenoon of May 10 
(1874), the date of her hundredth anniver- 
sary, and on retiring from church remarked 
to the pastor: " How good it is to be in the 
house of the Lord! How I love thv house, 
O my God ! " The next day about seventy 
relatives and other friends dined with her. 
But we brin? vou the joint salutations of 
a much larger number. You, dear madam, 
appreciate the truth that the amount of 
divine care in any single instance is truly 
wonderful. From the 'dawn of infancy on- 
ward, it is never for one moment inter- 
mitted. The wearied nurse may fall asleep, 
but " He that keepeth thee will not slum- 
ber." In the circulation of the blood the 
force of pulsations every twenty-four hours 
is measured, science tells us, by the weight 
of tons, and in number these pulsations 
amount daily to not less than two millions. 



252 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

In the course of a century they have be- 
come almost innumerable ; yet the eye of 
God has been upon each of these ; upon 
the functions of all the uncounted tissues 
within ; upon every breath drawn, as well 
as upon all surroundings, all steps taken, 
and all movements of the hand and the eye. 
While some measure of decay is inevi- 
table, it awakens deep admiration that so 
complex and delicate an apparatus as the 
human system should be kept in such ex- 
cellent working order so long. Mind and 
body at this age are sometimes seen to 
retain a good degree of vigor. According 
to a certificate in the parish register, Will- 
iam Bone entered his one hundred and 
first year, October 3, 1887 ; and on that 
day was present at a congratulatory meet- 
ing of the parishioners ; walked up a steep 
lane, and chimed three church bells all at 
once without assistance, in honor of the 
Queen's Jubilee and his own birthday. The 
Rev. Daniel Waldo, who lived to be one 
hundred and two years of age, preached 



ONE HUXDRED. 253 

an admirable sermon on the Sabbath im- 
mediately preceding his hundredth birth- 
day. When "Father Sawyer" — the Rev. 
John Sawyer, of Maine — reached his hun- 
dredth birthday, the event was celebrated 
by a public service, with throngs in attend- 
ance. After his extemporary address, and 
a prayer, many children were taken up 
to shake hands with the patriarch, and 
receive his blessing. One little girl, who 
had been much impressed by the occa- 
sion, whispered to her mother, " I guess he 
always minded his mamma." "Yes, dear, 
but what made you think of that?" "Why, 
doesn't God say, 'Thy days shall be long?'" 
The late Col. George L. Perkins, of Nor- 
wich, Conn. — who outlived six family phy- 
sicians ; who to the last fulfilled his duties 
as treasurer of an important corporation, 
which he had thus served for fifty years ; 
who received a throng of guests cordially 
on his one hundredth anniversary — was 
noted for the absence of all acerbity, for 
his optimism, for his benignity, and for 



254 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

his animated delight in children. When 
a youth he had feeble health, and on that 
account was sent to the West Indies. So 
feeble indeed was he, that a man servant 
had to accompany him. General regularity 
of habits, strict attention to diet and due 
exercise, abstinence from intoxicating drinks 
and tobacco, an unusually cheerful and 
contented spirit, characterized him. 

No one of the senses is more sure to 
yield in old age than the sight. Ebenezer 
Cobb, a farmer well known and respected, 
who was born in Kingston, Mass., 1694, 
where also he died, 1801, had the unique 
distinction of Jiving in three centuries. His 
later years were passed in total blindness ; 
but otherwise his faculties were retained 
remarkably. On his hundredth birthday a 
large company gathered to shake hands 
with him. He remarked : " I should think 
everybody in Kingston had been here, and 
I haven't seen one honest man among you." 
Sometimes, however, the eyesight becomes 
even stronger at this extreme period. That 



ONE HUXDRED. 255 

was true of Dr. Edward A. Holyoke, a son 
of President Holvoke of Harvard College. 
For seventy-nine years he continued active 
professional services in Salem; and when 
he died at the age of one hundred and 
one years, all the church bells of that city 
tolled in token of regard. It was his steady 
purpose to work on so long as any strength 
remained ; and that resolution had to do 
with the continuance of mental vigor and 
an elastic step. After the use of glasses 
for forty years, strong sight returned at 
eighty-five, and thence onward he could 
read the finest print without artificial aid. 
The New Testament in Greek was his com- 
panion to the last. Letters written by 
him when a hundred years old show that 
strength of mind had not left him. 

A peculiar interest attaches to men and 
women who continue exempt from those 
extreme infirmities which usually attend 
abnormal longevity. We think of orange 
trees which may live a long while and be 
still fruitful and fragrant. Some of them 



256 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

in Southern Europe are said to flourish for 
more than a hundred years. Women in 
full numerical proportion reach this ad- 
vanced point of earthly life. Mrs. Cath- 
erine Shafto, of Whitworth Park, England, 
possessed a strong constitution and a vig- 
orous mind. On her one hundredth anni- 
versary she appeared at both breakfast and 
dinner, and at the wedding of a grand- 
daughter which took place the same day, 
She showed a deep interest in the welfare 
of all around her ; dispensed a generous 
hospitality ; and retained her intellect un- 
impaired to the close of life. 

For the matter of gifts, we bring you 
chiefly warm hearts. Nothing can serve 
as an adequate symbol of our gratification 
and our regard. We hand you one hun- 
dred precious texts of Holy Writ, as so 
many jewels, knowing that no costly neck- 
lace would be equally prized. We are re- 
minded of Kaiserswerth by the Rhine. Any 
one who visits the deaconesses' establish- 
ment there must carry away a very pleas- 



OXE HUNDRED. 

ant memory of the provision made for 
aged inmates. Passing through a beau 

ful garden, one comes to the Feier-A 
Hans, a plain but comfortable abode of 
rest for aged deaconesses. The name is 
beautifully symbolic; it denotes the even- 
ing before a great festival. 

Some years since you read a notice, 
and spoke of the Rev. Henry Boehm's last 
birthday. He died on Staten Island, X. Y., 
December 28, 1 S 7 5 . aged one hundred year-, 
six months and twenty clays. He entered 
the itinerant ministry of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, January 6, 1S00, and contin- 
ued to preach until a few days before his 
death, a period of seventy-five years. On 
the day when the venerable patriarch was 
one hundred years old special services were 
held at Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, 
Jersey City. In the midst of a crowded au- 
dience of ministers and people, and in the 
presence of family friends, he delivered an 
add furnishing many valuable remin 

cences, and closing as follows : M ' The Lord 



258 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

is good ; a stronghold in the day of trouble, 
and he knoweth them that trust in him.' 
As I attended, and guarded, and nursed 
Asbury, so am I attended, nursed, and ten- 
derly cared for by my beloved daughter 
in my weakness and age. My hope is 
bright, and I expect soon to meet my co- 
laborers on high." The old man's strength 
was remarkable, holding out well during 
the services, which lasted for several hours. 
On the evening of the same day he was 
of course the hero at a delightful recep- 
tion given to many ministers and others, 
and was as happy as any of his guests, 
receiving until a late hour their congrat- 
ulations, with repeated thanksgivings to 
God. Beautiful and touching gifts were 
presented — among them a unique souvenir 
sent for the purpose from China, and bear- 
ing the inscription, " Father Boehm's Cen- 
tennial Tea." At the close Father Boehm 
arose, and in a clear, full voice, sang a 
little German song which he had learned 
ninety-five years before from his German 



ONE HUNDRED. 259 

teacher, a Hessian soldier whom Washing- 
ton captured at Trenton. 

You recollect that on the one hun- 
dredth anniversary of Sir Moses Montefiore, 
kind messages were sent him by Queen 
Victoria, the Prince of Wales, the Lord 
Chancellor, and the Empress of Germany. 
Over eight hundred letters, and over six 
hundred telegrams in many languages and 
from nearly all parts of the world, were 
received. Arrangements had been made 
that his centenary should be celebrated by 
a religious service in all the synagogues 
of the United Kingdom, as in numerous 
other Jewish communities. He was a pa- 
triarch of benevolence. 

"There flowed behind that old man's ears 
The silver of a hundred years." 

Many friends join today in devout 
thanksgiving, and in earnest supplication 
in your behalf. It is a joy and rejoicing 
to us that for full fourscore years you 
have been a public professor of faith in 



260 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

Jesus Christ, and that love to him, his 
Word, and his cause on earth, has attested 
your sincerity. We have never read of but 
two conversions at this extreme period. 
Luke Short, a native of Dartmouth, Eng- 
land, at about fifteen years of age heard 
John Flavel discourse most impressively 
upon the words, " If any man love not the 
Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema, 
Maranatha." Soon after that the youth 
came to this country, and lived in Middle- 
borough, Mass. Having at length reached 
one hundred years of age, his faculties but 
little impaired, he bethought himself of his 
early life, and of Flavel's sermon, and of 
the many years he had been living in sin. 
Conviction, repentance, faith, and peace 
through the blood of the cross, followed. 
He publicly confessed Christ, and united 
with the church in the place just named. 
The other instance is that of Mr. John 
Pitman, of Barnstead, N. H. , who was hope- 
fully a convert during a revival in the year 
1832. He received baptism on the step- 
ping-stone at his door, in the presence of 



OXE HUXDRED. 261 

numerous spectators. It was the sixth of 
May, the clay he became one hundred years 
old; and his wife, aged ninety, was received 
to the church at the same time. Look 
through the entire list of centenarians, and 
do you find another case of the kind ? 
Great as is the improbability that any 
given person will reach that pinnacle of 
life, still greater is the improbability that 
conversion will tlien take place. The two 
instances given show that no one need 
absolutely despair ; and still more that no 
one should presume. 

Among the many traditions, chiefly of 
small value, relating to the apostle John, 
is one which may have some foundation, 
that he lived to be about one hundred. 
It was fitting that the eagle should be 
selected as symbolic of his lofty character 
and lofty flight. Hufeland, in his Art of 
Prolonging Human Life, states that the 
golden eagle attains to a great age ; that 
there have been known instances of its liv- 
ing above a hundred years. Your thoughts 
soar as did those of the beloved disciple, to 



262 OUR BIRTHDAYS. 

the great white throne and to the song of 
Moses the servant of God, and the song 
of the Lamb. The Lord of heaven will 
have the great company around him begin 
life there at all ages, and will have as 
great a variety there as here. The young 
children could not be spared, certainly, nor 
can the patriarchs. The landscape of both 
worlds would suffer inexpressibly if all the 
little hills, or any of the high hills, were 
brought to a common level. Not only is 
the hoary head a crown of glory, if found 
in the way of righteousness on earth, but 
is it not a special decoration in the golden 
streets above ? Gray hairs soften wrinkles 
here below, but they are supremely attrac- 
tive on high, where all that is venerable, 
tempered by the freshness of immortal 
youth, is required to the completeness of 
celestial society. 

Tent-pins are at present being loosened; 
the tabernacle is ere long to be taken down, 
but only to be pitched again as a building of 
God, a house not made with hands, eternal 
in the heavens. 



IXDEX OF NAMES. 



Aaron 114 

Abraham 114, 243 

Adam, Thomas 16 

Adams, John 32, 143, 172 

Adams, John Quincy 36, 55, 65 

Adrian II 36 

Alexander, Archibald S2 

Anderson, Rufus 65 

Angelo, Michael 5. 1:6. 156, 1S2 

Arnauld So 

Arndt, Ernst Moritz 6, 66, 1S3 

Atticus, Titus Pomponius 5S 

Augustine , 22 

Baillie, Joanna 172 

Bakewell, John 236 

Bangs, Dr. Nathan 101 

Barbauld, Mrs 99, in 

Barocchio 129 

Barrington, Shute 197 

Barzillai S7 

Bathurst, Lord 141 

Beadon, Canon 242 

Beckford, William 47 

Beecher, Lyman 96 

Bellini, Gentile 

Bennett, Grace no, 165 

Bentham, Jeremy 

Beza, Theodore | 

Blake, William 5 



264 INDEX OF NAMES. 

Blankinship, Lydia B 251 

Bliicher, Marshal 22 

Boardman, Judge 191 

Boehm, Henry 257 

Boniface 44 

Bonpland 143 

Brougham, Lord 1J 7> 157 

Brunei 42 

Bryant, William Cullen 82 

Buell, Samuel 85 

Buff on 4 

Bulstrode, Richard 81 

Bunsen, Baroness 108 

Burder, George 23, 51 

Burnet, Bishop 4 

Burns, Robert 8 

Busby, Richard 172 

Calderon 80 

Caleb 141 

Camden, Lord 100 

Cameron, Simon 148 

Camillus 72 

Campbell, Lord John 5, 84 

Caraffa, John Peter 72 

Carnegie, Lady 135 

Carter, Elizabeth 164 

Cartwright, Edmund 49 

Cassiodorus 204 

Castanos, General 15, 172 

Cato 78 

Cherubini 22 

Christobella 162 

Chevreul 211 

Clark, Mary 245 

Clarkson, Thomas 95 

Clement XII 65 



INDEX OF NAMES. 265 

Cleveland, Charles 244 

Coan, Titus 86 

Cobb, Ebenezer 254 

Cooke, Josiah Parsons 187 

Cooley, Timothy 86, 158 

Cooper, Peter 185, 197 

Cornaro, Luigi 95, 116, 148, 191, 210 

Crayer, Caspar 143 

Crebillon 39, 96 

Cruikshank, George 66 

Cumberland, Bishop 117 

Cushing, Caleb 13 

Dandolo, Enrico 126 

D'Arblay, Madame 164 

D'Aubusson, Pierre 65 

De Brienne, John 84 

Delany, Mrs. Mary 29 

Dod, John 236 

Doria, Andrea 126 

Du Deffand, Madame 40 

Duponceau, Peter S. ' 39, 56 

Dwight, Mrs. Mary 189 

Eastman, Jonathan 237 

Edgeworth 75 

Edgeworth, Maria * . 93 

Eldon, Lord 104, 119, 141 

Eli 235 

Eliot, John 29, 115, 140 

Ellis, Welbore 100 

Ellis, William ^S 

Emmons, Nathaniel 43, 186, 190 

Erasmus 7 

Euripides 22 



266 INDEX OF NAMES. 

Falkenstein, General 5 

Farinto, Paolo 72 

Fedele, Cassandra 180 

Ferguson, Adam 205 

Finney, Charles G , 44 

Fletcher, Mary 15 

Fleury, Cardinal 15 

Fontenelle 245 

Foss, Countess Von 89 

Franklin, Benjamin 5, 72, 99, 130 

Galba 5 

Galileo 12, 63 

Garrick, Mrs 231 

Gibbon 224 

Goethe 43, 47, 62, 64, 81, 106 

Goodell, William 44 

Goodwin, Thomas 230 

Gouge, William 70 

Grimani, Antonio 157 

Grube, Bernhard Adam 183 

Hahnemann . 80 

Hale, Sarah J 179 

Hall, John Vine 75 

Handry, Vincent 246 

Hart, Maria 109 

Havergal, Frances Ridley 52 

Haweis, Thomas 107 

Haydn 57 

Herschel, Caroline ... 2, 40, 46, 63, 104, 133, 136, 191, 205 

Herschel, William 72 

Hess, Antistes 151 

Higginson, John 198 

Hill, Rowland 115, 175 

Hobbes, Thomas 130, 157 

Holland, Henry 97, 117, 131 



INDEX OF NAMES. 267 

Holyoke, Edward A. . . . 230, 243, 255 

Hough, Bishop 206 

Huf eland 81 

Humboldt, Alexander von ... 39, 47, 74, 106, 157, 168, 173 

Hunt, Leigh 40 

Huntingdon, Countess 154, 170 

Hutton, William 30 

Innocent X 22 

Irving, Washington 12 

Isocrates 210 

Jacob 126, 192 

James, John Angell 69 

Jay, William 51 

Jefferson, Thomas 129 

Jeffrey, Lord 30 

Johnson, Samuel 13, 45 

Joshua 84, 126, 183 

Junkin, Dr 7 

Kamensky, Count 85 

Kaplitz, Gaspar 150 

Kempis, Thomas a 194 

Kent, Chancellor y^ 

Klopstock 57 

Landor, Walter Savage 143, 173 

Las Casas 5, 197 

Lathrop, Joseph 173 

Le Veger, La Mothe 79 

Lebrun, Elizabeth 83 

Longfellow, II. W 14 

Lord, Benjamin 157 

Lyndhurst, Lord 162, 172 



268 INDEX OF NAMES. 

Madison, Mrs 78 

Marlborough, Duchess of 98 

Martyrius 193 

Masanissa 162 

Mason, William 12 

Mather, Increase 106 

Maurepas, Count de 22 

Mayhew, Thomas 85, 198 

Maynard, Sergeant 117, 147 

McCulloch, Robert 226 

Metternich 36 

Miller, Samuel 193 

Milman, Dean 40 

Moltke, Von 184 

Monkton, Miss 211 

Montague, Elizabeth 78 

Montefiore, Moses 88, 156, 191, 216, 239, 259 

Montgomery, James 57, 90 

More, Hannah 29, 48, 58, 92, 133 

Moses 8^ 

Muhlenberg, Dr 48, 91 

Murchison, Roderick 13 

Nairn, Caroline 41 

Napoleon I 33 

Nari 76 

Newton, Isaac 117 

Newton, John 9, 24, 43 

Northcote 89 

Nott, Eliphalet 97, 147, 157, 197 

Nott, Samuel . . . 205, 237 

Nowell, Alexander 130 

Oberlin . . . 87 

Oglethorpe, General 231 

Ormsby, Mrs 135 

Oxenford, Henry 39 



INDEX OF NAMES. 269 

Palmerston, Lord 5, 36, 71, 98 

Parr, Thomas 250 

Parthenay, Catherine de 29 

Partridge, Oliver 230 

Peale, Charles W 117 

Perkins, George L 253 

Perkins, Nathan 174 

Perronet 174 

Phocion 84 

Pierson, Susan 3 

Piozzi, Mrs y?>, 105 

Pitman, John 260 

Pond, Enoch 186 

Porter, Sarah 199 

Procter, B. W 47 

Quincy, Josiah 31, 191 

Radetzky, Marshal 85, 146, 1S3 

Ranke 106 

Raumer, von 130 

Rees, Dr 8 

Reid, Thomas 39 

Rembrandt 117 

Rennie, John 21 

Ripley, Ezra 186 

Rogers 147, 149 

Romaine, William 82, 101 

Rottler 139 

Rousseau 170 

Routh, Martin J 242 

Rufus, Virginius 116 

Russell, Earl 149 

Russell, Lady Rachel 1150 

Saint- Pierre, Abbe 87 

Sansovino, Jacopo 381 205 



27 O INDEX OF NAMES. 

Savage, Sarah 158 

Sawyer, Dr 243 

Sawyer, "Father" 253 

Schimmelpenninck, Mrs 22 

Schwerin, Marshal 22 

Scott, Thomas 12 

Shafto, Catherine 256 

Shem 235 

Short, Luke 260 

Simeon, Charles . 23, 55 

Simonides 80 

Simson, Robert 56 

Sloane, Hans 204 

Smith, Sydney 29 

Somerville, Mary 95, 161, 181 

Spangenberg, Bishop 166 

Sprague, Charles 103 

Stearns, Abigail no 

Stephens, Dolly . 231 

Storrs, Richard S 54 

Swan, Timothy . 16 

Swift, Dean 24 

Talleyrand . . . 84, 1 1 5 

Tantiquigeon, Lucy 238 

Theophrastus 177 

Thiers 36 

Thorburn, Grant 127 

Thorwaldsen 12 

Thurston, Lucy G 42 

Ticknor, George 46 

Tilly 14 

Tintoretto 83 

Titian 38,148,156,210,218,242 

Tressan, Count de . ' 39 

Twesten, Professor 65 

Usher, Archbishop 4 2 



INDEX OF NAMES. 27 1 

Van Pool, Rachel 83 

Varro 80 

Vere, Lady 171 

Villars, Marshal 84 

Voltaire 64, 131 

Vondel 130 

Voss, Countess von 89 

Waldo, Daniel 211, 252 

Wallencrona, Peter de 216 

Waller, Samuel 84 

Walpole, Horace 13 

Walton, Izaak 56, 116, 143, 157 

Ward, John 158 

Ward, Nathaniel 43 

Warren, Mercy 56 

Waterman, Lucy 249 

Watts, Isaac 4 

Wellington, Duke of 94 

Wesley, John ..... 1, 23, 54, 72, 107, 114, 147, 154, 167 

West, Benjamin Z l il 2 

White, Bishop 165 

White, Gilbert 20 

Williams, Mrs. Robert 172 

Wilmot, Edward 205 

Wilson, Daniel 61 

Wilson, Thomas 197 

Winchester, Marquis 231 

Wingate, Paine 237 

Wordsworth, William 12, 37 

Wren, Christopher S3 

Xenophanes 196 

Zeisberger, David 55, 86 

Ziethen, General von 137 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Dec. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



022 009 216 1 



